[We earlier covered TRAI’s guidelines on SMS spam and how it will add to more confusion, as far as consumers are concerned. Here is a guest post by Mayank Sharma.]
No doubt unsolicited calls and SMS have been a menace to Indian society for a long time. People from both sides of the table have lobbied extensively with the government to keep their side of the business running. TRAI created the National Do Not Call registry against this Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC), but without enforcement or awareness it just seemed like an half hearted attempt. But now with the new guidelines being laid down by the TRAI (now called NCPR) it appears that the government is indeed serious to curb this menace. Or is it?
NCPR appears to have sharper claws compared to NDNC by making the operator party to the UCC. Operator cannot get away this time by passing the blame on to the aggregator. The fines imposed on a complaint registered are quite steep to make both the operator and aggregator sit up and screen the messages being sent over their network. For Bulk SMSes, it defines two categories, Transactional and Promotional. Transactional SMS, according to their FAQ is any message sent by Financial institution, Railways, Airlines or Educational institutions to it’s registered users. Everything else is termed as Promotional.
It appears that the consumers are indeed going to be happy with this new guideline if implemented and enforced to the dot. But they will also not be able to use any of the pull services that they were used to due to this blanket ban on such communication. Google (SMS number 9 77 33 00000), Facebook (92-FACEBOOK) and our own direction services (90088 90088) rely on consumers sending a SMS, and the service replying to the requested sms. TRAI guideline does not talk about these services, and since the operators are going to term any Bulk SMS as a promotional SMS,
- People registered in NCPR/NDNC will not be able use these services,
- People will lose interactivity as the message now will not come from the virtual 10 digit number and
- No one (even people not registered in NCPR/NDNC) will be able to use the service between 9PM and 9AM.
This guideline is definitely something good against the UCC, but it appears that not a lot of thought has been given while drafting it. TRAI seems unapproachable to any of our queries. It requests Tele-Marketer to register with http://www.nccptrai.gov.in after paying Rs 10,000/- and download the list of NCPR registered users for scrubbing, but the site just provides a CSV file with zero rows in it.
Is this yet another half hearted attempt by the TRAI to address Unsolicited communication? Is this going to kill the nascent industries banking on SMS pull services?
Only time will tell.
[Reproduced from Onze blog]
From what i read, Pull messages from Short Code or Long Code are allowed. So it doesn’t really hurt the interactivity.
Am i missing something here?
Nope. Responses to pull messages on both short code and long code are going to be sent on Promotional pipes, and hence will lose interactivity.
Have the guys at TRAI ever used mobile?
So no movie booking after 9PM. You can book Flight tickets but not bus tickets after 9PM?
Who the hell designs such architectures?
You echo my frustration
I am in agreement with Naman here — As far as I understand, Pull sms on both short-code & long-code would get a response.
Well said Sudarshan. Overfishing didn’t kill the common pond or the fish … but the fishermen !!
This is the classic economic problem “Tragedy of Commons” … dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.
I did read wikiPedia on “tragedy of commons” but I fail to get the context here
Blanket ban on both SMS pull or push is not good for the industry. This will not just impact SMS but other dependent industry. As a consumer I do not want to receive any promotional messages. In fact in the past I change operator who did not respect my DND request properly . He was not serious about it earlier but may be serious now.
We charge our customer for our services. We do not send communication to any Customers who are not registered with us. Now our services does not come under so called transactional services so our customer will not get any communication from us. What people like us need is way for our customer to send communication that I can receive messages from these sender id. While checking it should be checked against it.
At the same time this is the time to think beyond SMS and find something more innovative.
Very ill-thought one.
Let us take these cases:
1) A school would like to send an SMS to all its parents in the morning 6.00 AM that School is closed because of Bandh.
2) A bus company would like to send an SMS to all those who purchased a bus ticket saying that the service is delayed by 2 hours.
3) Customer of site like ours(UPto75.com) download a M-Coupon by way of an SMS.
So how are these promotional? Nobody is pushing promotional messages here.
There are already casualities because of new TRAI regulations. One of our existing SMS service providers is exiting from the business and sent an email to us to use up the remaining balance in next 2 days!
Hey,
Explain to me how will this affect the pull business?
Its not a bulk sms, its just a person getting reply to his query.
what is the virtual 10 number funda. Is that a way around?
this is stupidest decision by Govt, i dont think this would result any good. As India developing, i think SMS played atleast 5% in development and News/Info Sharing in Communities. Govt Stopping our Growth!!
We cant do anything advanced. Now i feel what if we cant do anything on Internet!! We cant buy Cinema Tickets, Book Bus Tickets, Get news or Score?? Trade Alerts, twitter, faceboook, push-back-sms serrvices??
Whole india will hold for 2 years… Change this!! i wish somebody case a file in courts… kill spammers not india
Guys
The Trai is not gonna do anything if there isnt a noise.
You cant even do a lead generation campaign on internet and call customers who have applied.
I mean, isnt Trai thought of that.
Any one have clarifications on internet based customers- can you call or sm – who are listed in dnc.
If not then the whole interent industry is dead.
Lets make a website or do a campaign and send it to trai on all non spamming models.
How many of us are in it.
i am…. i am totally against to TRAI.. its like chopping the branch TRAI and India sitting on…
this result a disaster for all online business websites.
TRAI must rethink in separating spammers and non spammers…
whom to contact or how to approach!!!
Lets make a website.
Look for a leader ie One Guy from internet and vas Industry who is a leader in his space.
Someone who has can create an influence.
Then contact all internet and vas players and roll them in and then go file a case against trai and sue them for million bucks for non senstive policy etc.
But we need to do this quickly
i hope this website owner is also following our comments, could u do something about this sir? we are starters in websites. this blows our business away.. all the hardwork… just going before our eyes
We have a portal for paid subscription for SMS Content.
http://www.smstadka.com.
The sad part of the story is that we have paid users to whom we have committed the SMS Delivery on time with the News and other critical SMS Content.
We even spoke to the operator, no-one in the industry is clear about the guidelines.
I think TRAI officials are too much busy with covering the latest scam.
Why can’t they simply register businesses who are willing to send transactional SMSes and assign them an ID.
Add strict rules/fine against the violations.
Users can disable/enable any of the ID, if they wish to.
It sure sounds like chaos is about to reign and perfectly good opt-in services are about to be hurt. Clearly TRAI has built a policy for bulk SMS and it seems to be getting applied to all services. For example what if I have Twitter SMS notification on 53000 – its not a virtual number so I am assuming this will keep working. And someone I follow with SMS notification on, creates a tweet after 9 pm – who is the guilty party here – the tweeter, the aggregator, the operator? Or will notifications just be turned off after 9 pm?
This policy needs to make one immediate clarification and clearly communicate it to the industry – THIS NEW POLICY SHOULD NOT APPLY TO ALL OPT-IN SERVICES.
Fact is that TRAI has failed to distinguish between what is solicited SMS and what is unsolicited SMS. It has treated every bulk SMS to be unsolicited.
Moreover, if a consumer wants to receive promotional from only one tele-marketer each across the seven categories it has created, then it is as good as open to all telemarketers.
In other words, the options given by TRAI are all false options as it still leave you open to unsolicited commercial communication, but with your permission.
In other words, they are going to make you ask yourself to kill yourself so that their act of murder does not become a homicide, but merely a customers wish
Kapil Sibal is a moron, and nothing can prove it better. This man does not understand the whole objective of making the regulation. He simply wants something to show as the work done by him.
What about services like JustDial where people get SMS after they make a call ??
In all probability, it will be affected as well. Meaning consumers in NDNC list will not get the SMS and no one will get the SMS between 9PM and 9AM
Most important question, what about way2sms and 160by2 giants in sms industry?? are they dead for 12 hours?
TRAI’s NCPR if enforced strictly will KILL Digital Advertising Industry !
TRAI’s NCPR initiative to curb Unsolicited SMS & Phone Calls, both SMS & Phone Calls as well as Email are Personal Communication Media’s and should not be used for Broadcasting / Spamming.
Un-solicitated calling is a menace, and that’s why there is a hugh industry for permission based contact (PULL Marketing), and Digital Advertising Industry is all about that.
Thus TRAI should bring Clarity as to how leagally can one contact the prospects / leads that may also be on NCPR but have responded to Advertisements on non-personal media.
There is good chance of Prank being played, where-in a person first fills the contact-us form / landing page / send sms to short-code and later denies and complains to TRAI for abuse and gets rewarded with Rs. 500/- Where-in Tele-marketer / Advertiser is made to pay heavy penalties and is risk of loosing his licence with 6 such pranks !!!
NCPR has big implication on Digital Lead Generation Advertising as one cannot call-back the leads generated onces NCPR goes live on Marck 1, 2011.
@Sinha, Mayank, Please Provide CLARITY ON PULL’s LONGEVITY..
There are Lots of Holes in NCPR and good opportunity for Pranksters to make money (Rs.500), at a Cost of a worthy Advertiser who only replies to solicited messaging and gets punished .
There should be some kind of Grievance Cell or Ombudsmen to check if the complain by the victim is valid or not, and tele-marketer is actually on fault or not.
This will make genuine PULL services to Survive.
Wny would one Advertise on Digital Media or Any Media, if One Cannot Generate Leads. …
/jg
NCPR’s for UCC – Unsolicited Commercial Calls
Does it also Blocks Solicited Commercial Calls, as these calls also go from same telecom Network, and same scrubbing of DNC data applies…!!!
Respondents to Advertisement will also be affected as they may not receive any call-back from Advertiser if they are on NCPR – DNC List !
For Advertisers, what is the point of doing Lead Gen Ads, if they cannot call them back !
Digital Advertising will suffer as only option left is Branding Banner Ads, with no click or landing page to capture leads.
Also, there seems to be a rumor, that all existing and new Mobile Registrations will be by default on NCPR, this means before responding to an advertisement get yourself out of DNC – NCPR (which is not practical)… !
NCPR is not just Bust for Pull Services but also Digital Advertising and with them the Start-ups with high dependence on Advertisement Revenue.
@Dr. Rohan, you rightly said, Kapil Sibal is a maron… He should not uproot Roses while removing Weeds (Spamsters). … This is Bad Move ! .. and worse it is happening in worlds largest democracy.
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