Notebandi pushes mobile panic button rollout to Feb

New Delhi: The Central government's plan to introduce mandatory panic button on mobile phones as a safety measure for women in distress may have to wait for some more time.Faced with a dip in sales post demonetisation, the mobile manufacturers have sought more time to clear their old stocks before getting panic button-enabled new ones. The plan was to be in place from January 1, but now the ministry of women and child development (WCD) hopes to introduce the panic button sometime in February. The project, which is being regularly monitored by the Prime Minister's office, was reviewed by the secretaries of WCD ministry and department of telecommunication last week. Sources said all companies are on board but they need time. It is learnt that the companies have conveyed their inability due to large inventory following demonetisation which resulted in poor sales in the last two months. " They want some time but are very much on board to implement the panic button scheme," a source said. The WCD ministry has been pursuing the issue of installation of panic button on mobile phones as one of the initiatives since June 2014. Based on extensive stakeholder consultations, the " Panic Button and Global Positioning System in Mobile Phone Handsets Rules 2016" were notified by the department of telecommunications. Under these rules, all new feature phones will have the facility of panic button configured to the numeric key 5 or 9 and all smart phones will have the panic button configured to three times short pressing of the ' On-Off ' button. All new mobile phones will be required to have the facility of identifying the location through satellite-based GPS. The alerts will not only go out to police but also to notified people. ( Times Nation, The Times Of India, Madurai, Monday, January 2, 2017 ) Courtesy : MPS