On Wednesday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) took a big step towards strengthening the regime of tariff forbearance.
It scrapped off a rule which mandated an operator to offer only up to 100 text messages at a concessional rate and price. Any message sent after this limit is charged at a minimum of 50 paise a message.
TRAI Curbs Operator Messages
According to TRAI, as per its draft Telecommunications Tariff Order, by removing Schedule XIII the TRAI is taking step towards strengthening the regime of tariff forbearance.
This provides the telecom companies with a free hand to fix charges for such bulk SMS used by non-commercial users. TRAI’s action will leverage the practice of forbearance to such messages as well.
Originally, in TRAI’s Telecom Tariff Order of 2012, the specific provision of higher charges over and above a certain threshold of daily text messages had been introduced.
It was supposed to kill the problems originated due to unwanted pesky calls and text messages. However, in its latest move, the telecom regulator believes that strict rules will prevent such unwanted calls and text messages from telemarketers.
TCCCPR 2018
In the rules created in July 2018, the regulator cited rules which made it mandatory cited rules for telcos to seek subscriber consent for receiving unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) from telemarketers.
Along with this, TRAI had also called for deployment of blockchain in order to ensure that telemarketing messages are sent only to subscribers from authorised entities.
TRAI also stated that the comprehensiveness of TCCCPR 2018 in dealing with the menace of UCC, which surely has the potential of adversely affecting the interests of genuine non-commercial bulk users of SMS, unfortunately is no longer required and therefore can be removed.
TRAI’s Fight Against This
According to Rajan Mathews, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the UTs that try and game the system and bypass its customer safeguards are somehow stronger than the preset telecom system, as the latter has no way of bypassing such disincentives.
The present limit of 100 SMSs a day would in no way inconvenience any legitimate customer who never reaches the cap of 100 SMSs in a day.
Phase 1 of the DLT implementation went live on Monday in which all telemarketers have to register their entity and header on their respective telco portals.
This is a great initiative as it provides proper background
checks and KYC compliance of entities who use the commercial channel.