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SatNav launches voice-based navigation service
Thursday, 09 April 2009, 15:04 IST
Hyderabad: GPS service provider SatNav Technologies Wednesday launched the country's first voice-based navigation direction service, SatGuide LCU.
"LCU, (Lost? Need Directions? Call Us!), is now available to all phone users in India. Finding your destination is just a phone call away," SatNav Technologies chief executive and founder managing director Amit Prasad said in a statement.
The customer, who calls the call centre, is guided by an agent over phone or will get text messages with road names along with landmarks and distances.
Users can avail this service by directly calling the customer care after purchasing prepaid voucher of 
100 with 15 minutes of talk time. The customer can call 1800-103-5656 from any telecom provider and he will be guided by a live trained agent.
Prasad said the vouchers will be available at 300 retail stores in major cities or can be purchased from SatGuide website www.satguide.in.
The customers of Reliance Communications across the country can also use the service by calling 56694404. Reliance will be charging 6 per minute for this service.
"Reliance Communications is the first operators to provide this service. Following the successful completion of the pilot project in Andhra Pradesh, the service is being launched nation-wide," said R. Swaminathan, Reliance Communications regional head (Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka).
Prasad said SatNav was in talks with Airtel, Idea, Vodafone and BSNL and they were likely to roll out the service in three months.
Initially, the service will be available from 6.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m. The Hyderabad-based SatNav has spent $1 million to roll out the service by setting up a call centre in the city.
The agents who provide directions are multi-lingual and can assist the customers in English and in Hindi. The application for LCU and the maps of over 200 cities and 1.5 million destination have been built in-house.
SatNav has filed a patent for LCU, which is an integrated solution to the yellow pages and directory services. Prasad hoped that the service would simplify the GPS technology and help the common man, who cannot afford to buy GPS devices.
Source: IANS
100 with 15 minutes of talk time. The customer can call 1800-103-5656 from any telecom provider and he will be guided by a live trained agent.
Prasad said the vouchers will be available at 300 retail stores in major cities or can be purchased from SatGuide website www.satguide.in.
The customers of Reliance Communications across the country can also use the service by calling 56694404. Reliance will be charging 6 per minute for this service.
"Reliance Communications is the first operators to provide this service. Following the successful completion of the pilot project in Andhra Pradesh, the service is being launched nation-wide," said R. Swaminathan, Reliance Communications regional head (Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka).
Prasad said SatNav was in talks with Airtel, Idea, Vodafone and BSNL and they were likely to roll out the service in three months.
Initially, the service will be available from 6.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m. The Hyderabad-based SatNav has spent $1 million to roll out the service by setting up a call centre in the city.
The agents who provide directions are multi-lingual and can assist the customers in English and in Hindi. The application for LCU and the maps of over 200 cities and 1.5 million destination have been built in-house.
SatNav has filed a patent for LCU, which is an integrated solution to the yellow pages and directory services. Prasad hoped that the service would simplify the GPS technology and help the common man, who cannot afford to buy GPS devices.
Source: IANS