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TRAI regulation on Bulk SMS- exemptions?

Profile Image for Sangeeta Banerjee Sangeeta Banerjee

Dear Emerge Members,

You may be aware that from 27-Sep, Bulk SMSes are not reaching Phone Numbers registered in the NDNC Registry (National Do Not Call Registry).

Some organizations e.g., Banks have got an exemption, and their Insta Alerts SMSes still work.

As part of our service (ApartmentADDA.com), Management Committees (MC) of Residential Complexes send out urgent SMS'es from the portal such as Fire Drills, Power/Water outages, Due Reminders, Urgent Blood Donation needs, Traffic Diversions etc.  The SMSes do not contain any Ads and are purchased by the MC - hence put into use judicially.

It is quite an essential tool for these MCs to reach the distributed Residents with urgent Communication. And it is their only tool to reach residents who are not connected to the Internet, e.g., senior citizens.

How can we get an exemption so SMS from ApartmentADDA can reach Registrants in the NDNC Registry.

Has anyone got an exemption on valid grounds?

Thanks!

Sangeeta

Replies to this Topic

Profile Image for Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam

Sangeeta, you raise a critical issue here - our customers, too, are affected by this half-baked mechanism. Would love to hear of a way to either gain exemptions or, as an industry, affect the overall policy in some manner.

Profile Image for Avinash Raghava Avinash Raghava

Sangeeta, Kishore, We have put together a document and we will be sending out the same to TRAI in a day or so. We are jointly working IAMAI on this.

Thanks.

Avinash

Profile Image for Rakesh Kumar Rakesh Kumar

While, we should get exemption on critical SMSs, we should have something in place which can stop real estate and deal-site marketers keep SPAMMING our inbox. They are mis-using this whole system by putting a unique code which I think is allowed by TRAI

Profile Image for Sangeeta Banerjee Sangeeta Banerjee

Thanks, Avinash. It is heartening to know that coordinated action is underway. Please let us know if we can do anything to be of help. Also, if possible, please do share the document presented to TRAI, so we can keep our customers informed.

Profile Image for Anil Varghese Anil Varghese

Hi Avinash, good to know about the IAMAI effort in this direction. if you can share the document here, it'd be good.

The important point TRAI missed is subscriptions. There are many firms who got shortcodes(54545/57575 etc) where users can subscribe to messages. This is a good way of permission-based marketing, but TRAI's latest one-sided blanket ban has blacked out messages to these users who had subscribed to the messages.

Instead TRAI should allow flow of messages while enforcing the regulation quickly on reported spammers. I have reported about spam to Airtel many times but no action was taken. This is where the action is needed from TRAI.

 


 

 

Profile Image for Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam

Guys, I did some digging and it seems it is NOT that bad a deal. You CAN sign up with an operator directly, setting aside a deposit of Rs. 1 lakh, and continue to send SMSs to NCPR-listed numbers (non-NCPR numbers get all SMSs anyway even now). Talk to your SMS operator or, if they can't support you, talk to mine (email me and I'll connect you guys).

The challenges are in these areas:

  1. The deposit is a fairly large sum - 1 lakh, per TRAI's directivces (PDF details here, under Access Providers).
  2. The complaint redressal process is (IMHO) not very clear.
  3. The penalties are very large - minimum Rs. 25,000, risking complete 2-year ban if repeated six times.

We are planning to work with some of our customers in this model - let's see how it pans out.

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