The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) plans to impose a termination charge of five paisa for every commercial SMS on service providers from where the messages originate. This means the operators will have to pay a minimum interconnect usage charge of five paisa per commercial SMS to the other, which may further reduce the number of unwanted messages.
The proposal are part of the new Trai regulations for stopping pesky messages and calls, which came into effect from today. “We are likely to issue a regulation by October 15 to impose the five-paise termination charge on commercial SMSs, and not on general SMSs,” Trai chairman J S Sarma said.
Currently, some of service providers charge 10-15 paisa per SMS as termination fee on mutual agreements, but it is not mandatory.
“Hundred SMSs per day has already put restrictions on commercial SMSs. This additional termination charge would make it more difficult for telemarketing companies. These companies may have to rejig their business model, as the cost structure would change (as the operator would ask for additional amount per SMS from telemarketing companies),” said Hemant Joshi, partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
The bulk SMS market would undergo a significant shift but the impact on operators’ revenue was not likely to be significant, he added.
Trai had earlier examined the need for interconnect charges for SMSs. But fearing that it might lead to an increase in tariffs, the proposed plan did not see the light of the day.
The new Trai regulations has restricted the number of messages to 100 a day for a pre-paid user and 3,000 a month for the post-paid user, to prevent misuse by non-registered telemarketers. The restrictions will not be applicable on special/festival days.
The telemarketing firms or service providers flouting the norms will be charged a penalty of up to Rs 2.5 lakh, which was earlier in the range of Rs 500-1,000.
The dealers of telecom operators, DTH players e-ticketing agencies and social networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn and GooglePlus and agencies providing directory services such as Justdial and Askme would be exempted from the restriction of 100 SMSs a day, Trai said.
Transactional messages such as messages from banks/insurance companies or telecom service providers giving information relating to their customers’ accounts, or from airlines/railways to their passengers regarding flight/train schedule, are already out of the ambit of the new regulations.
The mobile subscribers who do not want to receive telemarketing messages and calls have to register in the national customer preference registry (NCPR), which was earlier known as DND call registry. About 130 million mobile subscribers have already registered, out of the total base of over 800 million.
A subscriber can send a message STOP to 1909 to de-register from DNC or START 0 to fully register in the DNC. However, if a subscriber wishes to continue receiving such messages he/she will have to register to in the partial Do Not Call (DND) registry for receiving messages in certain categories. The subscriber may choose to be under the 'Fully Blocked' category which is akin to the 'Do Not Call Registry'. The user can also choose the 'Partially Blocked' category, in which case he will receive SMSs in the categories chosen by him. TRAI has identified seven various categories.
No commercial communication, even for unregistered customers, will be sent between 9.00 pm and 9.00 am. The department of telecommunications (DoT) has allocated ‘140’ number series for both mobile and fixed line networks, which will help users in recognizing the commercial calls.