Google has launched 'Free SMS Chat' service for its free email service Gmail and paid email service Google Apps customers in India along with 51 other countries in Asia, Africa and North America. This feature allows users to send SMS to mobile phones from gmail chat windows from 10, October. Users just need to add friend's mobile numbers of their contacts in the email address book.
The service starts with free 50 SMS credits for each user and every sent SMS costs one credit. Every reply received adds on 5 credits subject to the maximum level being 50 SMS at any given time. If no replies are received to any of the sent 50 text messages and the credit balance come down to zero, then Google will add one credit after 24 hours. This credit limit was intended for preventing misuse of this service or spamming.
The Gmail Free SMS service is now available on eight Indian Mobile operators Aircel, Idea, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata indicom and Vodafone. BSNL, MTNL and Airtel are not supported yet.
The SMSes sent from Gmail chat are delivered to mobile phones while replies from the mobile phone come into the chat window. For the mobile phone user, the reply is charged at local SMS rate as per her/his normal billing plan.
If you want to block SMSes from GChat from a particular contact, you can just reply to the message with 'BLOCK', later if you wish to continue receiving messages have the option of sending 'UNBLOCK'.
Gmail Indian users can totally block this service, if they don't wish text messages from any Gmail user, just by sending 'STOP' SMS to +918082801060 and to reactivate the service they can SMS 'START' to the same number.
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