Free SMS Services available in India | All covered!

I have already reviewed many SMS services on Tech Bangalore, this is the consolidated post on all available SMS services. Free SMS services are important as many of us don’t have free SMSs on our tariff & service providers doesn’t allow free SMS festival occasions. So, I am making a list of available services with small description about each of them.

Free SMS services:

Way2SMS:

Way2SMS is a free SMS service which enable you to send free SMSs to any mobile number in India from web. Just sign up & start sending SMSs. It also has group messaging service. Out of 140 characters of SMS, users are allowed to send 92 character messages. Remaining characters will be used for advertisements. Despite of web interface to send SMS, way2SMS also has wap interface. So, If you have GPRS active on your mobile phone, you can send SMSs via mobile phone also.

Link: www.way2sms.com

You Mint:

You Mint is yet another service similar to Way2SMS which allows you to send free SMSs to any mobile in India via web. It allows 80 characters of message & remaining used for advertisements. You Mint claims “We actually pay you for getting friends signed up to this service!“. You Mint pay users for referring friends to it’s network.

Link: www.youmint.com

Conclusion:

Way2SMS stands out in lot of areas listed below:

• Way2SMS allows 92 characters unlike 80 characters of You Mint
• Number of SMSs per day or to a number are limited in You Mint, unlimited in Way2SMS
• You Mint has time limitations to send SMS, free SMSs are allowed only between 8 AM to 10 PM
• Lack of wap site

Group Messaging Services:

SMS Gup Shup:

SMS Gup Shup is the best available service to send group SMSs. You can create your own group & start sending SMSs. You can use web interface to send SMSs to group of people free of cost. You can also send SMS to your group from you mobile, send SMS to 567673434 & that gets delivered all people in your group.

Link: www.smsgupshup.com
Tech Bangalore Review

Activ Mobs:

Activ Mobs is a Bangalore based group SMS service which enable you to send group messages from your mobile. The idea of Activ mobs is to send message bunch of people for the cost of one SMS. Activ Mobs don’t have any web interface to send group SMSs. This is the SMS only service with registeration & using services are via SMSs only. Activ Mobs uses karnataka local number rather than premium number which reduces the SMS sending cost.

Link: www.inactiv.com

Tech Bangalore Review

Tagg.in:

Tagg.in is a recently entered into group SMS service. Tagg claims it’s not only group SMS system, but also a Micro Blogging platform. Tagg has pretty good interface & simple registeration process. For me, it looks like clone of SMSGupShup with no additional features.

Link: www.tagg.in

Tech bangalore Review

SMS Sharing Service:

Vakow:

We don’t have any competetors in this service, Vakow rules! Vakow is a greate web service for SMSs I have seen. Vakow is to share SMSs with your friends & world. You can use either web interface to post messages or via SMSs. Users can subscribe to other users, rate SMSs posted by others…etc. You can also store personal messages which carries memories (Ex: First proposal you got from a girl/boy ;)). Personal messages can be marked private which will not be visible to anyone else.

Link: www.vakow.com

Tech Bangalore Review

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In my experience Plusmo is the easiest way to mobilize your blog. It makes your blog easily readable on mobile phones. Your blog can be mobilized using plusmo in three easy steps:

1. Go to www.plusmo.com & select a widget to put on your blog.
2. Give your blog URL in next step & click “Fetch”
3. It generates a HTML, copy that code & put it on your blog.

That’s it! Now your visitors can subscribe to your blog through their mobile phone. For first user has to download the Plusmo mobile application, which is small & simple. Later they can add more blogs which they want to read in that application. Browsing blogs in Plusmo application is really fast & simple. You can use your phone’s navigation keys as “Next” & “Previous” to browse next & previous posts of a blog.

Plusmo also has a usage tracking system where you can see how many users are subscribed to your mobile content, number of pageviews..etc. Plusmo has a monetizing option, where they can put ads on your content with your permission & generate revenue out of it.

Go on, mobilize your blog!

If you use many micro blogging services like twitter, jaiku, pownce….etc, probably you will different bunch of people following you on different services. So you will need to update each of the services to send update to all followers. Hellowtxt helps you in updating all services at once. Registration at Hellotxt is not mandatory, but you will need to fill appropriate username & password for services you want to update. If you register at Hellotxt, this will be a one time process & Hellotxt will save your usernames & passwords for all services. Next time you will need to enter only Hellotxt username & password & can update all services. Hellotxt also works superbly on wap browser, I tried myself on basic entry level handset Nokia 2626.

Link: www.hellotxt.com

Here follows manual settings of Vodafone GPRS:

For Karnataka & Andhra Pradesh: (This setting is tested by myself in Bangalore)

Account Name: Vodafone_gprs
Homepage: http://live.vodafone.in
User Name: (no need)
Pass: (no need)

Access Point Settings:

Proxy: Enabled
Proxy Address: 10.10.1.100
Proxy Port: 9401
Data Bearer: Packet Data

Bearer Settings:

Packet Data Access Point: portalnmms
Network type: IPV4
Authentication: normal
User Name: (no need)
Password: (no need)

For Tamil Nadu:

Account Name: Vodafone_gprs
Homepage: http://live.vodafone.in
User Name: (no need)
Pass: (no need)

Access Point Settings:

Proxy: Enabled
Proxy Address: 10.10.1.100
Proxy Port: 9201
Data Bearer: Packet Data

Bearer Settings:

Packet Data Access Point: portalnmms
Network type: IPV4
Authentication: normal
User Name: (no need)
Password: (no need)

Anyone of these settings may also work rest of Indian states. I would like to thank Tech Bangalore commentators Mr. Ameer Ali & Churchill for sharing this valuable information.

Yahoo Messenger & Gtalk could be enabled for multi user logging. It will be helpful if you have two IDs or you & your sister/brother wants to be online.

Yahoo! Messenger
To enable multiple login in Yahoo messenger, you need to add a registry entry. Instead of doing that manually, you can just download registry file here. Double click that registry file & restart Yahoo Messenger. To disable this option, download registry file from here & double click it.
Trick by Daydream

gTalk
1. Create a shortcut of Google Talk messenger on your desktop or any other preferred location .(To create a shortcut, right click on your Google Talk messenger application and select Send To–>Desktop(create shortcut) )
2. Right click on the Google Talk messenger icon and select Properties option
3. Modify target location text “c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /startmenu to

“c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

4. Click Ok
Now open gtalk multiple times & login, depending on how many logins you want to make.

Trick by Tech Dreams

For those who don’t know about Twitter, Twitter is a service which ask you “what are you doing?”. But it’s deviated a lot from this theme & evolved as a big microblogging platform. You can just update whatever you want through web, IM or Phone. Others can follow your updates & can receive updates via all three mentioned mediums.

When you update Twitter through SMS, you will be charged one international SMS. Eventhough there is an Indian number, it’s not working to update. If it works also, you will be charged atleast 3 Rs. I love updating while travelling, so my mobile bill went up because of sms charges. So I started searching for an application which can update twitter using GPRS. There are many apps which does this job. But Cellity Tweeter caught my eyes because it’s tiny (abt 17kb), clean & works on almost any GPRS enabled phone.

Cellity Tweeter uses your GPRS connection to update twitter & very much economical compare to SMSs. You can also view your timeline & public timeline. You will need to have working GPRS connection, Airtel Online or Vodafone. Airtel Live will not work.

Almost everybody know that Hutch is now Vodafone. This makes a change in procedure of activating GPRS on Vodafone mobile. Following is the procedure to activate Vodafone GPRS:

1. Send sms ACT VL to 111.
2. GPRS will be activated in 24 hours.
3. After GPRS gets activate, you need to get settings.
4. For settings sms VL <Phone Model> to 56789, Ex: VL N2626 for Nokia 2626
5. You will receive MMS & GPRS settings back to back.
6. Save both the settings & get connected!

I am not sure of charges for this service. Vodafone charges are varying from pre-paid & post paid. My friend is using pre-paid & there is no monthly charges for him & only paying for tranfers (10 paisa/10kb). I activated same thing on my post-paid connection & Vodafone charging me Rs.49/Month. For this monthly charge I will get

1. 500 mb of transfer (I am not sure, I asked thrice when customer care girls told this). 5pais/10kb after that.
2.  30 MMS, 3rs/mms after that.

So make sure of charges before activating this service.

Bharti Airtel anounced in press release, they are launching GPS navigation system for supported handsets in colaboration with Sweden-based Wayfinder Systems. The application turns the compatible mobile phone into a complete GPS-based navigation system with detailed maps and Points-of-Interest of a number of cities in India. Airtel user can avail map information of following cities Delhi,Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad), Bangalore, Mumbai & Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chandigarh. Users also have an option to purchase map information of North America & Europe at http://airtel.mywayfinder.com. This service is currently it available only for Airtel Blackberry 8800 users. Blackberry users can avail this service free for SIX months by sending NAV as a SMS to shortcode ‘3636’ & download application. However, there will be data download charges applicable as per subscribers’ BlackBerry plans.

Few days back I had written a post on Airtel Internet through Mobile Phone as Modem . Now I am explaining step by step procedure to setup a connection to dial-up your Mobile as modem. Let’s get into steps:

1. Goto “Start–>Control Panel”
2. Click on “Network & Internet Connections”
3. Under header “Pick a task” click on “Create a connection to the network at your workspace”.
4. Now you will get “New Connection Wizard dialog box, select “Dial-up connection” & click next.
5. Dialog will ask for “Connection Name”, give whatever you would like to. I had given “airtelgprs”.
6. It asks for “Phone Number”, enter number as “*99***1#”
7. If you want select to put a shortcut on desktop (Preferred) & finish setup.

Now you will see a shortcut saying “airtelgprs” (In my case) on desktop. Make sure you installed your phone drivers & connect your phone. Double click the icon on desktop, leave blank “User name” & “Password” fields & click “Dial”. One message will pop-up to confirm its connected. Following are few points to check if not connected:

1. Check whether modem drivers for your phone are installed. Normally this will come with your phone’s PC Suite. Installing PC Suite will install all required drivers.
2. Check whether your phone could be used as modem or not.
3. You need to activate “Mobile Office” service of Airtel to connect. Other services like “Airtel Live” & “NOP/Airtel Online” will not work for this connection.
4. If you are getting message “Modem not responded”, try restart your mobile & reconnect it.

Satisfying all above points you will sure be able to connect to internet. To know about Tariff & Usage charges read post Airtel Internet through Mobile Phone as Modem