Mobiles ring in age of anywhere, anytime services:

Gone are the days when Amit Bhandari spent hours standing before crowded railway reservation counters shoving and jostling with others for space.Booking a railway ticket by punching some buttons on a mobile telephone while sipping cappuccino in a coffee bar is quite a refreshing change for the pharmaceutical marketing executive.Like Bhandari, millions of middleclass Indians now use their mobile phones not just to make voice calls but to transact a wide spectrum of services ranging from banking transactions to getting insurance claims processed.These services were unimaginable in a country where not too long ago people had to wait for months together to get a landline telephone connection and mobiles were considered to be gizmos for the elite."This facility is just fantastic," says an ecstatic Mumbai resident Bhandari, 32, as he goes through the short messaging service (SMS) sent by Indian Railways acknowledging his reservation request.

complete story