GPS or the global positioning system is a pretty handy thing to have. Why? Well, it will help you find your way back to wherever you want. Just key in some points and press some buttons and bingo! you are at your destination. An Indian company Bharti Airtel launched this service in collaboration with Sweden based Wayfinder systems. Airtel will introduce the handy GPS system in the Blackberry 8800 smart phones. This system will transform the cell phones to a GPS receiver complete with all kinds of maps as well as points of interest. The points of interest will be based on number of Indian cities like Delhi, Faridabad, Navi Mumbai, Mumbai proper, Chennai and Kolkata. I think this is a good endeavor from Airtel’s part. However, I seriously doubt how many of us will use the Blackberry phones. Maybe they should have thought about building this technology in other commonly used phones. About the GPS service plan Airtel is offering a 6month free trial to it’s blackberry 8800 users. According to the company, the customers won’t have to pay any charges whatsoever on the application initially. There is a data download fee that is charged to the users. Users will have to download the GPS application on their handsets. In order to do so all they have to do is SMS ‘NAV’ to ’3636′. According to the Chief Marketing officer of the Airtel mobile Sanjay Gupta , the GPS is supposed to be state of the art: We are now introducing in India a state-of-the-art GPS-based navigation system that will largely benefit all frequent travelers using compatible mobile handsets like the BlackBerry 8800 Hopefully Airtel will see an increase in users because of this latest service they have introduced. Irrespective of the number of users subscribed to the system, the best part about this is GPS service has started in India. At least you won’t have to ask for directions to random strangers.
