Major banks, telemarketers yet to adopt Trai’s new SMS rules

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday said major banks and big telemarketers have failed to adopt the new SMS regulations, which have been rolled out to check spam messages and protect consumers from online frauds, despite multiple reminders.

According to an official at the regulator, Trai has shared the details of failed messages and their reason with major banks and telemarketers individually. The regulator has directed these banks and other principle entities to implement the new SMS norms on an immediate basis. The official, however, did not disclose the names of the banks.

“We will wait for the data and see if the new regulations have been implemented. We have waited for two years since the rules were first introduced, so we are not giving any extension. We will take action against these entities and block their SMSes to consumers,” the official said requesting anonymity.

Trai said non-registration of template with telecom companies, missing content ID, mismatch in template registered and messages sent, among others, were the major reasons for failed SMSes.

Last week, Trai resumed the new SMS scrubbing rules after their implementation on 8 March led to massive disruptions in online transactions. However, the regulator asked telcos to ensure all messages reach subscribers so that the online transactions are not affected due to failure in delivering SMSes or one-time passwords (OTPs).

The new regulations, or the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, were introduced in July 2018 to “effectively deal with the nuisance of spam”, and prohibit unregistered entities from sending commercial messages. Registered firms are also prevented from sending fraudulent messages to customers.

The rules mandate telcos to verify the content of every SMS with the registered text before delivering it to consumers. For this, telcos have adopted blockchain-based technology (or distributed ledger technology—DLT) that checks headers, or sender IDs, and content of every SMS originating from a registered source, while unregistered sources are rejected.

This means all transactional and promotional messages are supposed to have a standard template with header, preference and content, which should be registered with the telecom operators. Livemint