Latest TRAI Rules & Regulations & Its Impact on our Services & Changes

 

The recent major changes by TRAI at a glance

  1. Stopped Sender ID for Marketing Messages instead of Sender ID unique code will be prefixed
  2. Tele-Marketing license is mandatory for all Marketing Companies.
  3. Separate Gateway should be allocated for sending Transaction & Marketing message
  4. DND violation penalty increased from Rs 500 to  Rs. 25,000 for the first violation and Rs. 50,000 for second violation and so on. If more than 7 violations are reported then the particular company will be blacklisted for next 2 years and all the telecom resources allocated to the company would be terminated.
  5. The companies who come under transactional message category defined by TRAI have to deposit a refundable security deposit of 1 lakh Rs and have to enter into a legal agreement.
  6. All P2P (Phone to Phone) traffic limited to 100 SMS per day (now revised upto 200 SMS per day)
  7. Sender ID can be allocated only for Transaction route and limited to 6 characters and subjected to approval from operator
  8. All promotional voice calls prefix should be +140
  9. All promotional web to phone (W2P) messages send via any Telecom Resources in India have to pay an extra 5 paisa  + Tax towards termination charges.

Please always keep in mind that the above rules & regulations are not implemented by us, we are only suppose to follow and make necessary changes in our internal process to comply with new guidelines.

Date : 25-Sep-2011

Eventually, after a long controversy, wait & confusions NCCPR (National Consumer Preference Register) come into effect on the 27th Sep 2011, in this regard it is important to understand how these guidelines change the way we operate.

Messages can be classified as two

  1. Marketing/Promotional Messages
  2. Transactional Messages

Marketing/Promotional Messages

“Promotional message” means message containing promotional material or advertisement of a product or service

Message Submission Timings

As per new regulations, no telemarketing (Voice Call or SMS) is permitted between 9.00 PM to 9.00 AM to any mobile subscribers strictly irrespective whether the number is registered with NCCPR Registry or not.

Changes : Messages would not accept after 9 PM till morning 9 AM.

Sender ID/Header for promotional Messages

From 27th Sep 2011 onwards dynamic Sender ID would not be provided for any customers for sending marketing/promotional messages. Instead of Dynamic Sender ID we will provide you with a unique 5 digit number assigned by Operator to us

Example

LM-154234

 

Where ‘L’ stands for the operator code here its “LOOP”

‘M’ stands for the service area here its “Mumbai”

‘-‘ is the delimiter

‘1’ defines the category of promotional message from 1-7 of partially blocked category

‘54234’ indicates five digits allocated to us by our operator

Changes: From 27th Sep 2011 onwards dynamic Sender ID would not be provided for any customers for sending marketing/promotional messages.

Categories available for a customer to subscribe

Code

Category

1

Banking/Insurance/Financial products/credit cards

2

Real Estate

3

Education

4

Health

5

Consumer goods and automobiles

6

Communication/Broadcasting/Entertainment/IT

7

Tourism and Leisure.

 

Transactional Messages

“Transactional message” means an SMS containing only—

  1. Information sent to its customer(s) by the Bank or financial institution or insurance company or credit card company
  2. Information given by Airlines or  Indian Railways or its authorised agencies to its passengers regarding travel schedules, ticket booking and reservation;
  3. Information from a registered educational institution to parents or guardians of its students;
  4. Information sent by e-commerce agencies in response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers;
  5. Information sent by a company or a firm or depository participant, registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) or Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) or Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) or National Commodity & Derivative Exchange Ltd. (NCDEX) or Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. (MCX) to its clients pertaining to the account of the client;
  6. Information sent by a registered company to its employees or agents or to its customers pertaining to services or goods to be delivered to such customers;

Sender ID/Header for Transactional Messages

LM-154234

 

Where ‘L’ stands for the operator code here its “LOOP”

‘M’ stands for the service area here its “Mumbai”

‘-‘ is the delimiter

 

‘ABCDEF’ indicates six alphabets for company or organization sending transactional SMS

Changes : Sender ID/Header is limited to 6 characters.

Message Submission Timings

Transactional Gateway is open for 24 hours

Transactional Gateway will be allocated only to following category of business

  1. Registered Companies
  2. Registered Banks & Financial Institution
  3. Insurance Company
  4. Credit Card Companies
  5. Registered Education Instituted (Only for sending information to parents)
  6. Airlines & Railway (Only for sending ticket & PNR details to passengers)
  7. Stock Market Alerts (Only to subscribed customers)
  8. E-Commerce website sending response to ecommerce transactions made by their customers

Changes: From 27th Sep 2011 onwards all allocated NON-DND route will be terminated and scrubbed against NCCPR Registry.

If your message content belongs to any of the above category we can allow you to send messages to DND numbers with your Sender ID. For more details please contact us

 

 

Termination Charge of 5 paisa + Tax on all Promotional/Marketing Messages

Date : 25-Oct-2011

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had issued “The  Telecom Commercial Communications  Customer Preference Regulations,  2010” on 1st December 2010.  All the provisions of these regulations came into force from 27th September 2011. In these regulations, the Authority has specified a number of deterrent measures to stop commercial SMSs to telecom consumers who have registered themselves with the National Customer Preference Register. However, in order to further deter the sending of promotional SMSs, the Authority has now prescribed‘ a promotional SMS charge’ of Rs. 0.05 (five paisa only) + Taxes  payable by an Originating Access Provider to the Terminating Access  Provider for each promotional SMS sent by a registered telemarketer from  the network of the Originating Access Provider to the network of the  Terminating Access Provider. 

To further streamline the  Telecom Commercial Communications  Customer Preference Regulations,  the Authority has also allowed  Transactional message sending entities to send Transactional messages  without registering as telemarketer with TRAI. The Authority has also  mandated that these entities will have to enter into a standard agreement  with their Access providers for obtaining any telecom resources.

The  “The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer  Preference (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2011” and Direction are  available on TRAI website http://www.trai.gov.in.

Impact : So, henceforth all Promotional SMS (Apart from the SMS deemed Transactional as per TRAI guidelines) sent through any telecom operators gateway will attract an additional charge of 5 paise apart from the regular SMS charges.

Changes in our Credit System to comply with new regulations.

In order to comply with the new rules & regulations we have introduced a new credit system called “Termination Credit” where each Termination Credit cost 5.6 ps (5 ps + 10.3 Tax)

SMS will be processed only if you have enough Termination Credit in your account, so you have the following 2 option to choose.

  1. Buying Termination Credit
  2. Converting Existing Credit to Termination Credit 

Buying Termination Credit

You can add Termination Credit separately as per your requirements. One Termination Credit costs you 5.6 ps

Converting Existing Credit to Termination Credit 

If you are not interested to buy Termination Credit separately then you have the option to adjust your remaining Normal/Priority/Marketing credits to Termination Credit based on the average price. Below example will simply the process.

Lets say your account having normal 1 lakh Normal Credit which you brought for Rs 5000 (5 ps per sms)  and if you would like to convert 50,000 thousand credit to your “Termination Credit”

50,000 * 0.05/ 0.056 = 44642

Credits you would like to covert X Average buying price divided by Termination Credit Cost (5.6 Ps) = Balance Termination Credit to add.

Whenever you are sending an SMS through Normal/Priority/Marketing route same credit will be deducted from your Termination Credit.

Note : No Termination Credit required for sending SMS through our Transaction Route.

For your convenience and transparency we have developed an MS Excel based calculator to find the average price and for calculating Termination Credit. Click Here to Download.

If you are still confused please feel free to contact your account manager they will happy to assist you.

We also would like to notice that we have Non-DND Transactional route with Sender ID for genuine business categories for sending Transactional SMS. For more details please contact us

Note : For Transactional Route there is no extra Termination Charges

Important Amendment & TRAI Reference Links


FAQ On NCCPR Registry by TRAI
Latest Amendment of Regulations by TRAI
All Amendments & Regulations by TRAI
Termination Credit Press Release

We always worked to help our customers, while being 100% comply with the new TRAI regulations applicable and requested your kind co-operation.

Thanks & Regards

This Document Last Update on : 04-Nov-2011