(13 December 2007 7:00 pm)

BANGALORE: Mobile service provider Spice Telecom (Spice) has launched its ‘Spice Local Lingo’ service in Bangalore. Bollywood diva and Spice brand ambassador Priyanka Chopra unveiled the new offering.

‘Spice Local Lingo’ permits sending of SMS in any of twelve Indian languages –- Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali and Urdu, in the script of each language.

The service is currently available on all Java-enabled phones. The ‘Spice Local Lingo’ service can be downloaded from the Spice portal with any GPRS-enabled phone. The charges include a one-time download charge of Rs 20 per language and a monthly subscription of Rs 5 per language thereafter. As an inaugural offer, the charges per SMS using Spice Local Lingo will be 50 paise.

While company officials refused to confirm the circles that Spice could get licenses for, they are upbeat about future developments.

The company plans to increase coverage to 800 towns in Karnataka and roll out Edge services (data card Internet) during the first quarter of the next calendar year, probably by early February 2008. In addition, the company has tied up service providers in circles where they don’t operate at present, for seamless connectivity of its planned Edge services.

On the anvil, are the company’s efforts to add 2000 towers to the existing 1800-1900 towers it has in Karnataka. The company shares infrastructure with most of the other players in the two circles that it currently operates in –- Karnataka and Punjab, a notable exception being Reliance.