MINISTER for Railways Laloo Prasad launched Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corp’s mobile telephone booking service on September 9.
Reservations can be made over the telephone using Hindi and English voice-recognition technology developed by Hutchison Essar Telecom. Once registered, users provide their origin and destination stations, the number of passengers, class, date and train number. The total fare is displayed on the phone screen and payment can be made by credit card.
Reliance Infocom has produced a Java-based booking facility, which provides an alternative way for mobile phone users to buy tickets.
BroadVision Global Services provided an interface between the two mobile phone services and the existing Irctc website booking facility. The website was deployed by BroadVision in August 2002, and is now used by 100000 people per month.
According to the minister, the mobile phone service is intended to provide access to booking services for the ’common man’, who does not have internet access. As well as reducing the ’serpentine’ queues at stations, it is hoped that phone booking will also cut the number of tickets bought fraudulently from touts.
When launched, the service initially covered the national capital region around Delhi, and was used by 3000 people per day. It has been extended to Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and is to be rolled out in 120 cities across the country.
H In an attempt to increase occupancy, IR plans to sell around 10% of the tickets for travel on selected less busy trains in online auctions.
