As the threat of the Novel Coronavirus continues to claim more and more lives around the world, people are trying to cope by maintaining social distancing and living in self lockdowns. Now, to remind the citizens about the importance of staying home during these bizarre times, mobile operators in various parts of the world are displaying subtle messages beside the network name in smartphones.
Telcos like Vodafone and Orange S.A are showing the message – “stay home” to users in countries like Germany, Romania, Turkey, Peru, Indonesia, Belgium, France and India.
The message was first noticed by Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, in his own smartphone. He tweeted a screenshot of the same on Wednesday. Following his tweet, many users started tweeting screenshots showing the messages in different languages.
Users from Turkey, Romania and Indonesia also shared screenshots showing different versions of the phrase “stay home”. Now, according to Navarra, the message started showing in Germany only when he turned off his Wi-Fi. However, that is not always the case. As we can see, a user from Peru tweeted a screenshot that displayed the message even when his Wi-Fi was turned on.
As of now, it is not yet clear if these messages are pushed by the operators in a unified way or not. Nonetheless, it is a really nice initiative by the operators to remind the citizens to stay at home and self-isolate. This is a fight that we have to win and the only way of winning right now is staying indoors.
