By
Telecom Lead Team: Indian telecommunications regulator TRAI has
asked all mobile service providers and international long distance operators to
block the bulk international SMS.
This
is to ensure that 800 million plus Indian mobile customers are not getting
unsolicited commercial calls from marketing companies.
As
per the provisions of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference
Regulations, 2010 on 1.12.2010, which have come into force from 27 September,
2011, the unsolicited commercial calls or SMSs will not be delivered to the customers
registered on National Customer Preference Register (NCPR).
Several
marketing agencies have utilized bulk international SMS route to send messages
to mobile users. This has annoyed the telecom regulator.
TRAI
admitted that during the implementation of the regulations, several incidences
came to the notice of TRAI that promotional SMS were being routed through the
servers located at international destinations and were getting delivered to
customers registered in NCPR.
It
was observed that generally such SMSs were getting originated from locations
within Germany, Sweden, Nauru, Fiji, Cambodia, Bosnia, Albania, Grenada, UK,
Jersey, Sint Maarten, Tonga, Vanuatu, Namibia, Panama, Antigua and Barbuda etc.
These SMSs contain the headers which are alphanumeric or starting with +91 or
numbers with international
codes,” TRAI said in a statement.
TRAI
said the telecom regulator took note of such incidences and had detailed
discussions with the telemarketers, access service providers and ILD operators
to evolve measures for addressing the above practice of routing SMS through
international locations.
Based
on these discussions, to strengthen the framework for addressing unsolicited
commercial communications and to effectively control SMS coming from international
locations, TRAI issued a direction to all the Access.
Providers
and the ILD operators mandating them to take the immediate steps, within thirty
days, to stop bulk SMS.
