The deadline for mobile phone manufacturers to comply with a government directive requiring Indian language support for handsets sold in India has been extended a second time.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) moved the deadline to February 1, 2018, citing “concerns raised by manufacturers” in complying with the directive.
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) released the standard on Indian Language Support for Mobile Phones in June 2016, which requires that mobile phones must be able to input text in English, Hindi and at least one other Indian official language, and must have a facility for reading messages in all 22 official languages.
The BIS cited that SMS messages and alerts have become a useful tool for the government in communicating messages to the public in times of disasters and for relaying information on education, health, and welfare. This is expected to be much more effective if the messages could be relayed using the native languages.
MEITY originally set the deadline for compliance to July 1, 2017, but two days before the directive was scheduled to take effect, it pushed the implementation date to October 1, 2017, and now it has been postponed again to February 1, 2018. This is reportedly due to delays in finalizing enhanced inscript keyboard layouts and in defining supported characters for each of the 22 official languages.
By Baishakhi Dutta
