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Come January 2018, mobile handset manufactures will be able to sell their products in India only if the product has the emergency feature that enables identifying the location through satellite-based GPS.
The Department of Telecom in a Gazette notification dated April 22 said so. The notification also says that effective January 2017, mobile phones without facility of panic button by pressing ‘numeric key – 5’ or ‘numeric key – 9’ to invoke emergency call cannot be sold.
“Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women, I have taken a decision that from January 1, 2017, no cell phone can be sold without a provision for panic button and from January 1, 2018 mobile sets should have also GPS inbuilt,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and IT, said.
The notification said smartphones without the facility of emergency call button by pressing the same for long time to invoke emergency call or the use of existing power on or off button, when short pressed thrice in quick succession can be sold.
“These rules may be called the panic button and Global Positioning System facility in all mobile handsets Rules, 2016. They shall come into force on the date of their publication in the Official Gazette,” the notification said.
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