The usage of Tamil over mobile phones is expected to be standardized, with mobile computing experts reportedly planning to submit a proposal to the Tamil Nadu government.

At the recently held "National Conference on Mobile Computing - Localization and Standardization" in Chennai, the organizers said that 50 percent of mobile phone users in Tamil Nadu could not use English-based applications such as SMS, and other value-added services (VAS).

Talking about the new initiative, V Sankaranarayanan, director, Tamil Virtual University, said that mobile phone usage would go up, once applications such as SMS can be made available in Tamil. But before these computing solutions can be launched, coding and localization efforts should be standardized.

Sankaranarayanan said that a proposal with recommendations based on various paper presentations at the National Conference, would be submitted to the Tamil Nadu government in the coming days, asking it to appoint a committee, and to come-out with a standardization as well as localization module within the next two months.

Adding to it, M Anandakrishnan, former vice-chancellor, Anna University, said that the DMK-led Government, in 1999, had introduced the Tamil Net Program for the standardization of Tamil keyboards and fonts and had called for the State to launch a "Mobile Phones Computing Standardization" initiative to incorporate Tamil letters and fonts in mobile phones for the benefit of millions of Tamils around-the-world.

On this occasion, experts from Singapore and Malaysia, presented papers on issues such as optimal Tamil layout for cell phones, designing of the keypad on mobile phones for the Tamil alphabet, text messaging engine, predictive texting for SMS (such as the T9 dictionary), and standardizing terminologies.