SMS your ticket to ride

As most people know, use of SMS (or text messaging) is much more common outside of the US. Here in India, you can use SMS to purchase rail tickets. As shown here, apparently you just text a certain phrase to a 5-code and receive a code back. The code you receive is used with this automatic kiosk to print out your tickets. If you’ve ever seen the “lines” at an Indian Rail Station, you would understand how cool this could be. No one was even using this kiosk in Bangalore, maybe because it is only for Airtel and Reliance customers; maybe because it hasn’t caught on yet; maybe because you are left wondering how you will be billed and whether or not there are additional charges.