From Jan 26, Mobiles To Have Panic Buttons For Better Safety

Mobile phones will soon have a new feature to ensure safety of women. They will have a ‘panic button' for help during emergencies.

Announcing the news on Tuesday (Dec 2), Union minister Maneka Gandhi said that as a pilot project, the testing of this has started. The new feature will be launched in Uttar Pradesh on January 26.

"The pilot project (to test the panic button backed by a real-time police response) will start in the state of UP from January 26," the Women and Child Development (WCD) minister told reporters, NDTV reported.

"If it works in UP, it can work anywhere," Maneka Gandhi said, considering the high crime rate in the state

The project's idea originated way back in April 2016 when the Department of Telecommunications told mobile manufacturers to have panic buttons installed in mobile phones by January 2017.

Also read: New women’s safety app launched in Hyderabad works without internet

The Features

The order said the phones will have the panic button in the form of numeric key 5 or 9 to make emergency calls. Smart phones without the facility of an emergency call, too, will have to have the same provision, or allow use of power on or off button as the panic button.

However, the order's implementation was delayed by a year due to various technical glitches.

Chetan Sanghi, Joint Secretary, WCD, has confirmed that every new phone in the country will now have a panic button feature

Also read: Towards making the Capital safer for women: Panic buttons in Delhi buses

How to download it?

Anyone with a smartphone can download the app from Google Play Store and Apple Appstore.

If a woman finds herself in distress, all she has to do is send alerts by long pressing the panic button. For normal phone users, only pressing the designated key would work.

READ:A safety app that works offline too!

Objective

"Once a user presses the panic button, five calls will be made to emergency number 112. Following this, five SMSs will be immediately sent to police authorities, and another three to five SMSs will be sent to family members of the victim," the official said.

Sanghi said there will be a pan-India implementation of the panic button in cellphones before the end of this year.

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