Western Railway goes tech savvy; partners with VAS provider MyToday Dailies for SMS updates to commuters

Mumbai: Western Railway has become the latest government department to leverage technology to communicate with its customers for better services.

Commuters on Mumbai's suburban Western line will now be able to receive SMS updates on mega blocks, train downtimes, and whether trains are running after particularly heavy monsoon showers.

In its latest endeavour, Western Railway has partnered with Value Added Services (VAS) provider MyToday Dailies for an opt-in SMS service that will allow commuters to choose to subscribe to general updates on local and outstation trains within the Western Railways' jurisdiction. 

The service is available to any cell phone holder, and went live on Independence Day this year.

The silver lining to the subscription is that unlike premium charges for typical value added services, Western Railway's service is free of charge.

To subscribe, commuters need to SMS ''START WRUPDATES <STATION OF CHOICE>'' to 09845298452. For e.g. For updates for Khar station, commuters need to SMS ''START WRUPDATES KHAR''. 

Having sent the SMS, subscribers will receive a confirmation and welcome message, and will start receiving general updates such as mega blocks, train affected services, new services, ticketing facilities and more, from Western Railway free of charge.

Commuters can opt-out of the service at any time by sending an SMS ''STOP WRUPDATES'' to 09845298452. The subscriber will not be charged anything for the updates, barring a regular SMS charge as per his mobile operator's plan for sending the Start / Stop SMS.

''Western Railway, a pioneer in various spheres, has taken another step in the field of Information Technology. After successfully launching initiatives such as Computerized Passenger Reservation, Internet Booking, Interactive Voice Response System and Smart Card, we will now provide free updates through SMS,'' A K Jhingron, general manager of Western Railway.

Rajesh Jain, managing director of netCORE Solutions said, ''Our goal is to continually add value to our subscribers. Our tie up with Western Railway will enable us to send our subscribers timely updates on both local and long distance train services.''

The GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade body for GSM operators had recently voted Netcore's MyToday Dailies as one of the select few ''True Mobile Start-ups'' in the mobile world.