City-based 160by2.com, one of the leading free SMS service providers in the country, has launched a service for its customers to send free text messages to and from the Middle East.
"The first-of-its-kind service is open to all internet users in India and enables free SMS connectivity to mobiles in these countries and vice versa. 160by2 users from the Middle East can also send messages to India and between those countries," said a company release.
At present, the service is being offered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and it will shortly be launched in the rest of the Middle Eastern and North African nations.
A consumer can login to www.160by2.com, register himself free of cost and start using the service to send free SMS. Earlier, users could only send messages in India.
One has to enter the mobile number and the country code with which he/she intends to communicate and then type in an 80-character message and send it to the designated mobile.
The remaining 80 characters space in the message will be used by 160by2 to feed in an advertisement.
"Free Internet to phone messaging service particularly to foreign countries is expected to gain huge popularity in the country and we at 160by2 have the first mover advantage in the area by this launch," said Satyakalyan Yerramsetti, chief executive of SMSCountry, which owns 160by2.com.
He sees a huge demand for this service from users especially from states like Kerala, Maharastra and Andhra Pradesh.
Founded in 2003 SMSCountry is among the leaders in the application 2 mobile SMS domain delivering SMS to about 550 networks in over 200 countries.