Google introduces free SMS in India; no boon for telemarketers

Google has extended its free SMS chat service to users in India. Indian users can now access the Gmail SMS feature which is also available in 51 other countries in Asia, Africa and North America. The company had first made the feature available to its users in some African countries in 2011.

The free Gmail SMS service allows users to send text messages to mobile phones via Gmail Chat. Responses to the SMSs would appear as replies in Gmail Chat with conversations to be stored in users' Chat history, like regular chats. The feature was activated for Indian users on 10 October and is available for regular Gmail users as also those on Google Apps.

In India the free Gmail SMS service is offered by eight major mobile service operators: Aircel, Idea, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata indicom and Vodafone in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal & Andaman and Nicobar, Assam, North East.

The free service is, however, not available on the Google Talk app, also referred to as GTalk, installed on computers.

Users initially get a credit of fifty messages with every message sent decreasing the credit by one and each message received in response to a text message sent via Gmail Chat, increasing the user's credit by five, up to a maximum of 50. When the SMS credit is exhausted, one credit is added after 24 hours.

The company has built in the credit limit to prevent misuse of its free SMS service for marketing / spamming.