TRAI asks telemarketers to apply new SMS rules by March 31

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has asked telemarketers and principal entities to apply the new SMS rules by before March 31, to avoid any disruption in the communication with the phone customers from April 1.
Indian telecom regulator has also asked regulatory bodies such as RBI, SEBI, IRDA, Central and State government departments, other autonomous bodies and other establishments to impress upon PEs under their jurisdiction to follow the regulatory requirement strictly.

The regulator has revealed the names of the 80 defaulters (PEs and telemarketers).

SMS defaulters

Axis Bank
Bandhan Bank
Bank of Baroda
ICICI Bank
Kotak Bank
Punjab National Bank
Reliance Retail
Samsung Electronics
State Bank of India
3M Digital Networks
Vedantu Innovations
BBNL BharatNet
Bulk SMS Gateway
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Gupshup Technology
One97 Communications
Onweb Software Technologies
Route Mobile
Tanla
Wizhcomm Consultants and Technologies

“In case these defaulters are not able to furnish the regulatory requirements, their messages will get rejected by the system automatically,” said the regulator.

TRAI said it has analyzed the scrubbing data and reports submitted by the telecom service providers (TSPs) and also held a meeting with telemarketers/aggregators on March 25. PEs including major banks are not transmitting mandatory parameters like content template IDs and PE IDs even in those cases where content templates have been registered, while sending such messages to the TSP for delivery.

TRAI has analyzed the cases of failure of messages during scrubbing and found that various PEs and telemarketers are not fulfilling the regulatory requirements. The messages are bound to be rejected by the system during the scrubbing process in the absence of these necessary parameters. Sufficient time has already been given to the principal entities / telemarketers and other entities to comply with the regulatory framework.

TRAI said few entities are not serious enough in complying with the provisions of the regulations thereby causing inconvenience to consumers. This should not and cannot be allowed to continue.

Telecom operators have made communications to PEs including major banks and telemarketers sending bulk SMSs who have failed to fulfill regulatory requirements and requested them to comply with the provisions of the regulations.

The regulator also said that it has also requested repeatedly to such entities on March 9, 12 and 23, to fulfill the regulatory requirements immediately so that there is no disruption in communication of such messages to the customers.

In compliance with provisions of the regulations, when SMS scrubbing was activated by the TSPs from March 8, some failure of application-to-personal (A2P) SMS traffic was observed. Some of the PEs had failed to meet the requirements as envisaged in the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR, 2018), even after two years, despite being fully aware of the regulations and the consequences.

TRAI had requested SPs to temporarily suspend the scrubbing of SMSs for seven days to enable the PEs to register the templates of SMSs in order to avoid inconvenience to customers.