New SMS Regulations in Full Force from Today: Details Inside

After much speculation, deliberation, court cases, and drama, the new SMS regulations, also known as the Telecom Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCPR), 2018, are in full force again.

New SMS Regulations: A Timeline

• 8th March: The norms were applied for the first time. On that day, almost 40% of the total traffic was dropped. Given that around 1 billion SMSes go through each day, that translates to over 400 million SMSes being dropped. These SMSes included crucial OTPs, along with promotional traffic.
• 9th March: After much pressure from the industry, TRAI had to put the regulations on hold for a week. Following four lawsuits in the Delhi HC including IndiaMart, PayTM and so on, the apex regulator extended the stay further. In the meantime, TRAI asked telcos to keep a report of all the telemarketers and companies that fail to comply.
• 23rd March: The telcos submitted the aforementioned report to the regulator. The report mentioned the defaulters, with notable names such as SBI, HDFC and Samsung, among a list of 40.
• 25th March: TRAI wrote a letter to the telcos on 25th March, ordering them to restart content scrubbing and blocking on April 1.
• 1st April: New SMS Regulations restart with full force after 24 days.

Major Defaulters

The following banks, companies, and other services were a part of the list of defaulters submitted to TRAI by the telcos on 23rd March.

• State Bank of India
• HDFC Bank
• ICICI Bank
• Punjab National Bank
• Axis Bank
• Samsung
• Delhivery

There might be delay in OTPs and other crucial SMSes. Therefore, if you are associated with any of these, please be advised.

What is TCCPR, 2018?

In the legislation, all commercial bulk SMS senders have to register their unique SMS templates. Basically, the template includes headers ID, content and user consent. After that, the “template” is registered on a blockchain-based platform developed by telcos. Consequently, the traffic which is not compatible will fail to reach the destination.

Simply put, Scrubbing refers to matching SMS content with a pre-registered template. Every principal entity (telemarketer) who sends commercial SMS will submit their template. If the content doesn’t match with the pre-registered template, the telcos block the message. In short:

• A telemarketer sends an SMS in bulk.
• Unregistered Users blocked straightaway.
• TRAI’s blockchain system matches the SMSes content with their templates.
• The messages that match with the template allowed to go through and the rest blocked.

The problem is, around 1 lakh new templates flow into the system at any given day. That makes it nearly impossible for 1 billion SMSes to pass the filters per day. Basically, the system and the filters are rigid. That implies that even the genuine promotional, transactional and service SMSes are not going through.

Watch this space for more info on the same.