Bangalore: One of the well known mobile service providers, Spice Telecom (Spice) has triggered off its ‘Spice Local Lingo’ service in Bangalore. The multi lingual service, Spice Local Lingo was launched by Bollywood diva and Spice brand ambassador Priyanka Chopra.

The service allows sending of SMS in any of twelve Indian languages –- Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali and Urdu, in the script of each language.

Currently available on all Java-enabled phones, the ‘Spice Local Lingo’ service can be downloaded from the Spice portal with any GPRS-enabled phone. The charges for the service include a one-time download charge of Rs 20 per language and a monthly subscription of Rs 5 per language thereafter. As an inaugural offer, the charges per SMS using Spice Local Lingo will be 50 paise.

Spice officials informed indiantelevision.com that Spice features on top of the list as far as telcom licensing is concerned and that probably by next week it could be allotted licenses for 12 to 20 circles that it has applied for. While company officials refused to confirm the circles that Spice could get licenses for, they are upbeat about future developments.

During the first quarter of the next calendar year, probably by early February 2008, Spice is planning to increase coverage to 800 towns in Karnataka and roll out Edge services (data card Internet). Additionally, Spice has tied up service providers in circles where they don’t operate at present, for seamless connectivity of its planned Edge services.

The company is also planning to add 2000 towers to the existing 1800-1900 towers it has in Karnataka. The company shares infrastructure with most of the other players in the two circles that it currently operates in –- Karnataka and Punjab, a notable exception being Reliance.