Send SMS in Gmail now comes to India

Gmail has now started rolling out Free SMS feature from Gmail for users in India. One can send SMSs from chat window to mobile phone.

• Use Gmail Chat to send SMS
• Responses will appear as a reply in Chat 
• Conversations will be stored in your Chat history, just like regular chats.

Step 1: Type the phone number you want to send an SMS to and click Send SMS

Step 2:  Add the SMS recipient’s name and country, then click Save

Step 3:  Write in your message in the chat window and press Enter on your keyboard

Done!  Your message has been sent.

The service starts with 50 SMS credits for each user.SMS credit is an allocation of SMS (text messages) that you're able to send to a mobile phone:

• Initially, you're granted a credit of fifty messages.
• Every time you send a message, your credit decreases by one.
• Every time you receive an SMS message in Chat (for example when a phone user replies to one of your messages) your credit increases by five, up to a maximum of 50.

If your SMS credit goes down to zero at any point, it will increase back up to one 24 hours later. So, you won't ever be locked out of the system.

Keep in mind that if you'd like a higher message credit, you can always send an SMS to your own phone, and then reply to that message multiple times. Every time you send a reply message, your SMS credit is increased by five. Effectively, you're buying more messages by paying your phone company for these outgoing messages.

Block SMS from Gmail

If you receive an unwanted SMS message from Gmail Chat, you can block future messages from the sender. Just reply to the message with the word 'BLOCK'. If you change your mind about that sender, you can send a message with the phrase 'UNBLOCK' to the phone number from which the message was sent (the SMS messages sent from Gmail Chat have their own number associated with the sender's email account).

All mobile operators are supported in India for SMS Chat in Gmail.

(Source: Google )

UPDATE: Tried sending SMS via Gmail to mobiles on Airtel ,BSNL service providers but getting error & SMS credit too shown at that moment as decreased but later gets credited if SMS not sent. So at present the service might not be properly activated.