Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) will ask mobile phone companies to sell their devices with multi-language support feature that will boost e-governance in India.
DeitY, Government of India, has instructed the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to come out with an Indian Standard that could be used for implementation of multi-language feature. BIS will publish the final standard after consultations with the mobile phone industry and other stakeholders.
Some standard features of future handsets will be the availability of a minimum 4MB memory. Out of which 2MB will be reserved for official Indian Languages support. Message readability will be provided for all 14 scripts and 22 official Indian languages and inputting of text would be available in English, Hindi and at least one additional Indian language.
At present, only about 10 percent of Indians are comfortable in transacting in English language.
“Provision of multi-language support in mobile phones will catalyze Digital India program, make life of citizens convenient as accessibility to critical services and utilities will become extremely fast and transparent,” said Indian Cellular Association (ICA) National President Pankaj Mohindroo.
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