facebookAirtel subscribers in India can now access Facebook on their mobile phones without any GPRS or 3G data plans. The service is based on Fonetwish which was developed by U2opia Mobile, a Singapore based social and mobile applications provider company.

This service uses Unstructured Supplementary Data (USSD). USSD is mainly used by telecom companies to send alerts to their users that inform them about their balance at the end of call, sending balance information on enquiry or for sending miss call alerts.

Airtel users can dial *325# (*fbk#) on their mobile handsets to access Facebook without subscribing GPRS or 3G data plans.

Below are some of the points you should be aware of before using this service:

1. This technology does not support graphics so the users will see all the updates in text only.
2. Users can update their Facebook status through this USSD service free of cost.
3. Rs 1 per day will be applicable for accessing the full-feature application (which enables viewing news feeds, commenting on or liking news feed stories, posting on friends’ walls, confirming friend requests, viewing notifications and finding as well as adding friends).

Currently only Airtel offers this service in India. No update regarding this service have been received from other telecom companies.

Related Articles:

[via The Economic Times & TechLineInfo]