Google Assistant has a phone line in India for those without internet access

Ben Schoon | Sep 19 2019 - 7:13 am PT

Google Assistant is currently the most powerful voice assistant on the planet, but it’s useless without an internet connection. To help those who want to get answers from the Assistant, Google has partnered with Vodafone in India to give the service a dedicated phone line to access Google Assistant.

In a blog post today, Google details several new initiatives in India with this new phone line being one of the most interesting. There are “hundreds of millions” of users in India with 2G smartphones that either has a very slow connection or lacks access to the internet entirely.

With the new Google Assistant phone lines, those users can simply call 000 0800 9191000 for a completely free, internet-independent way to get answers from Google Assistant. This supports both English and Hindi languages at launch and offers options such as getting sports score, traffic details, and even weather forecasts.

We also announced an initiative to help the hundreds of millions of Indians who use 2G phones get the information they need, without requiring data or an internet connection. The Vodafone-Idea Phone Line—supported by the Google Assistant—enables Vodafone-Idea users to call a single number (000 0800 9191000) free of charge at any time, and ask for everything from sports scores, traffic conditions and weather forecasts to help with homework. The service will be available across India in English and Hindi.