Business Standard / New Delhi Jun 25, 2009, 00:58 IST
Everyone has his favourite story about mobile manners, or rather the lack of it. In what has to be a first, however, the Government of India’s ministry of communications has come up with ‘Instructions regarding Mobile Phone Etiquettes’. The circular (number 20-210/2008-AS-I) tells readers that ‘mobile phone etiquettes are common courtesies …’ and points out that it is obligatory for all mobile phone providers to ensure there is enough literature out there in various languages for customers to follow. It then lists various ‘mobile phone etiquettes’.
These include keeping the phone on silent/vibrate mode or switching it off if required, moving away from people while talking, not taking pictures of people with a mobile phone without their consent, and so on. The last bit of advice says ‘the mobile phone user should not send request to the television operators for scrolling their private SMSs on the screen of televisions’ — it would be easier to tell the TV operators not to do this, but one supposes that a good babu thinks of all eventualities while drafting a circular. In which case, it missed out ‘don’t throw mobiles in toilet’.
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