Mumbai, April 16, 2001: Orange, Mumbai's leading cellular operator has launched a unique e-mail facility whereby subscribers can now send and receive emails from popular accounts from any cellular handset. This service allows consumers to access almost all popular e-mail accounts such as Rediffmail, 123India and all ISP accounts as well as other popular accounts anytime, anywhere. This is the newest addition to the range of SMS services provided by Orange and all subscribers (post paid) have been activated to use the service.

All the user needs to do is to log into his/her e-mail account through the phone and get a unique Handle which allows the user to access their inbox, read all e-mails as well as reply, compose and delete the messages. To get the Handle the user has to go to Write Messages on his/her handset (any model) and type: MAIL username@mailaccount.com Password (E.g. XYZ@rediffmail.com Password) and send it to 12323. The user would receive an immediate reply which will provide the user's handle e.g. "XYZ". This is a one time exercise to register and receive the Handle. For obvious security reasons, each handle is unique to an individual consumer's Orange number.

Once the Handle is received, to start accessing the e-mail all that the user has to do is go into Write Messages and type the following message MAIL XYZ and send a message to 12323, and the user would receive an instantaneous response of the most recent e-mail messages in his/her inbox. In case user requires assistance, he/she can access an online user guide on her phone by typing HELP MAIL and sending it to 12323.

E-mail is the most popular (by far) service used on the Internet - and is in fact the single most important reason for the Internet explosion. This service is expected to be a winner as users realize the clear benefit of accessing virtually any of their popular e-mail accounts through any cellular phone - instant access on the move, without a PC.

The service is customised for the mobile phone interface whereby all unnecessary headers in forwarded or replied e-mails are filtered out. All attachments are displayed by their name and size. Using convenient commands, users can read up to 1920 characters of an email. Another customisation feature for the mobile phone is the automatic shortening of text. Since the number of characters are limited in an SMS, the common words such as see, you, are, we, for, are converted to c, u, r, v, 4 and so on to maximise the message that can be packed in an SMS. This service is priced extremely low at Rs.1 per outgoing message, with incoming messages free and is powered by saboori.net.

The Orange brand has been introduced in India by Hutchison Max Telecom, Mumbai's leading cellular service provider. Hutchison Max Telecom is part of the Telecommunications division of Hutchison Whampoa Group, Hong Kong.