SMS limit increased from 5 to 20 per day with immediate effect

New Delhi: The government today increased the SMS limit per day from five to 20 with immediate effect, according to a notification issued by the Ministry of Communication. From today, the mobile customers in the country, which is more than 930 million, can send a maximum to 20 SMS-es in one go and more than 25 KB of data through mobile phones.

Mobile users were restricted to sending only 5 SMS-es per day from last Saturday to check spread of rumours, which fuelled panic among people from the North-East.

"We have banned bulk SMS-es and MMS-es for 15 days," Union Home Secretary RK Singh had said last week.

According to the government, since the clashes in Assam, misleading information and hate messages were being spread through SMS-es and MMS-es that led to panic among the people from the North-East. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were also reportedly used to circulate morphed images.

Along with the restrictions on SMSes and MMS-es, hundreds of web pages have been banned by the government since last week.