Are you fond of sending text messages via SMS? Well, sad to say that our friends from India won’t really have a choice, because theTelecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) plans to regulate sending of SMS for everyone.
According to Indian tech blogTech2, starting Feb 1st 2011, all telecom operators will be forced to restrictover700 million mobile phone subscribers to only 100 SMS sent per day. Being an industry-wide regulation, consumers won’t be able to avail of more SMS, even if they are willing to pay.
The reason cited by TRAI is that “unsolicited commercial communications can be/are being sent by unregistered telemarketers and such messages can be sent by any person and they are essentially in the category of P2P communications.”
According to astudy, Indians in urban cities send only an average of only 29 SMS per day. 75% of them, however, receives AT LEAST 4 marketing/promotional texts in a day. With statistics like these, it doesn’t come as a shock that the TRAI is taking action against it.
Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam.
Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders!
This is not TRAI’s only action to curb spam SMS. Transactional and promotional SMS will be filtered using different IDs that will go through the nationalDo Not Call register.
I’m not exactly sure how Indian netizens will react to this but I am guessing with the availability of alternative channels to talk, it wouldn’t be a huge issue for some.
Story byFrancis Tan
Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social me(show all)Francis Tanis the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social media and e-commerce. Get in touch with him via Twitter@francistanor Emailfrancis@thenextweb.com.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
