In a time most of things like banking booking air tickets, calling a cab and so on can be done through mobile phone, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) plans to use SMS services of mobile phones from July to make rail ticket booking easier.
According to a newspaper report quoting a senior IRCTC official, “The bookings can be made from anywhere and at any time in a secure manner without a need to log onto the internet or stand in a queue.”
The report further added that any mobile user can operate this system using handsets ranging from feature phones to smartphones.
In contrast to the current procedure of booking rail tickets on mobile which are done through a web Browser or app, the proposed service will enable user to book ticket through a simple SMS or a menu-based dialing service which is mostly used by the banks nowadays to offer account services to its clients.
Though not much clarity is there about how will the new ticket booking system work but as the launch date approaches IRCTC will be sharing further information of the same.
In the last couple of months IRCT has been has been adopting mobile technology in a big way to make the rail journey of passengers, right form booking a ticket to reaching destination, a smooth experience.
It all started in January 2012, when IRCT started working on revamping its mobile apps for booking tickets from smartphones ( different OS).
Following that Railways also allowed passengers to show SMS sent from IRCTC as proof of ticket instead of paper tickets while travelling to ticket examiner.