New Trai whip on unwanted SMSes

Uniform termination charges, immediate probe and 2-year blacklist for unsolicited commercial use

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) issued a new norm on Friday, of a  five paise termination charge on each transactional short message service (SMS) and two paise on each normal SMS, on the operators from whose networks the message originates.

Also, if any subscriber is found using telecom services for unsolicited commercial communications, he or she will face immediate disconnection. The name and address of such subscribers shall be entered in a blacklist and no resources would be allotted to these subscribers for a period of two years in such cases.

• Trai proposes Rs 0.05 termination charge on commercial SMS, Rs 0.02 for normal SMS

The new regulation — Short Message Services (SMS) Termination Charges Regulations, 2013 — will be effective from June 1. “The five paise charge is already there for promotional messages. Now, it will also be applicable for transactional messages, which also falls under the category of commercial communications,” Trai Member R K Arnold told reporters on Friday.

The regulator had discussed the issue yesterday with the chief executives of telecom service providers. The meeting was attended by representatives from Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Videocon, among others.

However, transactional SMSes originating from government organisations will be exempted from the new termination charge, Arnold said.

The termination charge is paid by the operator on whose network the calls or SMS originates to the operator on whose network the communication ends. Termination charges have a direct link to the rates for voice calls and SMSes.

At present, Bharti, Vodafone and Idea Cellular charge a termination fee of 10p for each SMS, based on bilateral agreement. However this move was not accepted by Reliance Communications, Tata Telservices and Aircel, which refused to pay the charges. The matter went to court.

Telcos get about 18 per cent of their revenue from value-added services, of which about 40 per cent comes from SMS.

According to the Cellular Operators Association of India, the bigger telcos were earning about Rs 20 crore as termination charge from bulk and transactional SMSes annually. The new would bring this down to Rs 10 crore. Big operators, however, did not have to pay much to each other as termination charges for individual SMSes; individual subscribers who send a message to another get a reply in 90 per cent of the cases.

The new norm is expected to  help new telecom operators, which had opposed the steep termination charge of 10p, saying average SMS rates paid by customers were between 15p to 25p. “Large operators were using their clout to impose an SMS termination charge as high as 10p on small operators interconnecting with them. This was getting reflected in high SMS tariffs (rates) for consumers. The new SMS termination charge of 2p set by Trai will set right the prevalent market distortion, in the rightful interest of Indian consumers,” said the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India’s secretary general, Ashok Sud.

As for the penalty on unsolicited use of SMS for commercial purposes, the regulator has amended the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations. In the case of a valid complaint, the operator shall disconnect all resources allotted to such a subscriber, after due investigation. This provision comes into force with immediate effect, Trai said.

“...There are many private persons who are sending commercial messages to the subscribers...Now, resources of such subscribers will be disconnected,” said Arnold.

In November 2012, Trai had said consumers would be charged not less than 50p for each SMS after a threshold of 100 a day. The directive came as part of the regulator's endeavour to curb unsolicited SMS and calls, which continue to be a major problem even after imposing spam guidelines.