Hyderabad, Aug 26th: After launching railway enquiry services through SMS, the Indian Railways will soon offer enquiry services through easy-to-use USSD technology. Through this new technology people can know about the PNR status, fare enquiry, current train running position and accommodation availability. Mr. Pankay Gupta, business head, enterprise, Spice Digital said on Wednesday said that the service is being run on a trail basis across the country and will be implemented once after getting permission from IRCTC.

Spice Digital is the PPP partner of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC), which is the nodal agency of Indian Railways for ticket booking and enquiry. USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) provides menu based and session based communication, enabling a variety of applications, Unlike SMS inquiries, it has faster turn around time. The USSD provide a variety of services that are currently available on the internet. This helps people to access the services through mobile phones which are not internet based.

To utilize the services the customers has to dial *139# and each enquiry would cost Rs 3. The services will be made available to the people before January. Apart from this the basic services, IRCTC and Spice Digital would also offer value added services such as booking hotels, cab services, travel packages and even tickets through the 139 platform.