Indian government mandates ‘alarm button’ on mobile phones

Mobile phone manufacturers in India must implement an emergency button in devices by early next year. With smartphones, this means pressing the On/Off button three times. The button is intended as a protection measure for women in the country.

All phones sold in India from January 2017 must have the alarm function, the government writes. At the same time, the government in the country has decided that by 2018 all devices must have support for GPS to be able to trace the location of people in an emergency.

The measure is mainly intended to protect women in the country. India has been in the news regularly in recent years with incidents of women being victims of gang rape, mutilation and other atrocities.

On smartphones, users should be able to press the On/Off button three times, while on cheap mobiles with numeric keys, the numbers ‘5’ or ‘9’ can serve as an alarm button from early next year. A long press on one of the two numeric keys should automatically call a number that calls emergency services. The government is in consultation with manufacturers to bring the function to existing devices as a software update. “Technology is meant to make human life better and what could be better to use it for women’s security,” said the country’s telecoms minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad.