‘Panic button’ on mobile phones to be tested in UP from January 26
0‘Panic button’ on mobile phones to be tested in UP from January 26.
A pilot project to test ‘panic button’ feature on mobile phones to ensure women safety will kick-start from Uttar Pradesh on January 26, Union minister Maneka Gandhi said today. In April, 2016, the Department of Telecommunications had, through a gazette notification, made it mandatory for mobile manufacturers to provide panic buttons in cell phones by January, 2017.
The order said the phones will have to have the panic button in the form of numeric key 5 or 9 to invoke emergency calls. Smart phones without the facility of an emergency call, too, will have to have the same provision, or allow use of power on or off button as the panic button. However, implementation of the order was delayed by a year for various reasons.
“The pilot project (to test the panic button backed by a real-time police response) will start in the state of UP from January 26,” the Women and Child Development (WCD) minister told reporters at an event here. “If it works in UP, it can work anywhere,” she quipped in a veiled reference to the high crime rate in the northern state.
Gandhi said an earlier trial of the project saw a large number of prank calls, leading to a delay in implementing the panic button feature. Chetan Sanghi, Joint Secretary, WCD explained that all new phones in the country now have a panic button, but the back-end architecture is being implemented in Uttar Pradesh.