(Today) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI's) New Regulations from 27Sep'11

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has announced 27th September 2011 as the date of implementation for Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Sixth Amendment) Regulations, 2011. The details are as follows,

For our better understanding, I am highlighting the key points from the Regulation:

As per the notification, the entire Bulk SMS industry has been classified in 2 categories:

1. Transactional
2. Promotional

 

Transactional Messages :-

Messages can be deemed transactional if they fall in the below categories :-

Information pertaining to the account of its customer sent to the customer by a licensee or Bank or financial institution or insurance company or credit card company or depositories registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India or Direct to Home Operators.

Information given by Airlines or Indian Railways or its authorized agencies to its passengers regarding travel schedules, ticket booking and reservation.

Information from a registered educational institution to its students or their parents or guardians.

Any other message as may be specified by the Authority, from time to time as “Transactional message”.

Transactional messages can be sent late at night also (bank and credit card SMS for instance). Earlier everything was restricted between 9pm and 9 am.

** As per regulation, our SMS will not come under Transactional category. There is no classification of Informational messages, like ours, hence it will fall under the category of Promotional messages.

Promotional Messages :-

All promotional Messages will be delivered between 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Between 9.00 PM to 9.00 AM, Messages will not be delivered.

Messages are deemed promotional if they do not fall in the above “Transactional categories”. Promotional Messages would be delivered to subscribers who are not present on any NCPR category / DND registry.

All telemarketers have to register, and will get numbers starting from 70. For eg, Value first is our Telemarketer

The NDNC registration process is just 7 days (from 45). But once you change your preference, you can’t change it for three months more.

Current NDNC registrations automatically get transferred into the “Fully Blocked” category.

All Commercial call and SMS is off between 9 PM and 9 AM.

No SMS packages for more than 100 SMS per day will be allowed for end-customers ( Peer to Peer / Mobile to Mobile )

Following are the NCPR Categories with their codes

Banking/Insurance/Financial products/credit cards

Real Estate

Education

Health

Consumer goods and automobiles

Communication/Broadcasting/Entertainment/IT -- we will be in this category

Tourism and Leisure

0 - If none of the above categories

Sender id would be XY-5ZZZZZ, will be 6 digit, 1st digit will define the NCPR category and last 5 digit's will be the unique identification code allotted to telemarketer by operator.

All data needs to be scrubbed.

Post successful implementation of this regulation, our sender id will look like “TD-0Indus” or “TD-6Indus”

To the service provider, Fines for slip-ups is from 25K (First offense) to 2.5 Lakhs (Sixth). Further offenses the marketer is banned for two years.