Thinking Aloud

Your DNC now covers SMS too

Monday, February 02, 2009 - Economic Times

PUNE: Mobile phone subscribers should be able to heave a sigh of relief from this month for they will not receive unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) through SMS, thanks to a recent TRAI notification.

TRAI, the telecom industry’s regulatory body, has mandated that all mobile operators have to prefix an identification tag before all application-to-peer (A2P) SMSes being sent from their SMS centres (SMSC) from February 1. A2P refers to messages generated from bulk messaging systems permitted by TRAI.

The mandatory identification tag will thus leave a TRAIl, making it easier to detect the sender. If the recipient of the SMS has registered with the national do-not-call registry, a complaint can be lodged with the TRAI.

If the recipient is not registered, the regulator is not bound to act on the complaint. SMS-UCCs received by subscribers are normally identified with a sender id which can be a ten-digit mobile (or landline) number, an alphabetic code like Mobiopps and HBCS or a numeric code like 58888 and 56262.

Till the TRAI notification, SMS-es sent from a mobile or landline number were easy to track as they originated from the SMSC of the same operator who owned that number. However, as SMSes began to be sent by bulk message providers using an alphabetic or numeric code, making it tougher for the service provider to track the sender.

Now, with the TRAI mandate coming into play, all 17 new and existing cellular operators and the 22 service circles have each been assigned a unique one-letter identifier. TRAI dispatched copies of the mandate last week to cellular operators and also to bulk-SMS providers, who buy SMS inventories from operators to send these A2P SMSes.

Ravi Ghate, founder of the Pune-based bulk-SMS provider SMSOne, said, “According to the mandate, if a subscriber gets an SMS from an alphabetic or numeric code, the code will be prefixed with a two-letter identification tag. The first letter will reveal the SMS centre, while the second letter will determine the circle the SMS originated from.

If the subscriber is registered with the do-not-call registry, he needs to forward the SMS to 1909, after adding its sender id before the message in the SMS. He can also call that number and lodge a complaint.” 1909 is a TRAI-designated toll free number for all telecom operators.

Mr Ghate said the mandate is a deterrent to senders of pesky bulk SMSes. “Though some subscribers may still get such SMSes, the sender will now be tracked immediately if any subscriber complains. With penalties as high as Rs 500 per pesky SMS, the sender will not dare to send SMS to such registered subscribers.”

Earlier, TRAI had mandated a move against unsolicited phone calls. Though that did not prove effective since subscribers continued to receive such calls, the current mandate has enough teeth to nail the culprit.

Mr Ghate said, “Other than the call log in the cell phone, a customer had nothing to prove beyond doubt that the call he got was unsolicited. Hardly any mobile phone user records voice calls, so it was impossible to ascertain the details of the conversation between the user and the caller. The caller could say he was a friend or that he had dialled a wrong number. SMS is a strong proof and now it will be impossible for the sender to get away.”