Why Should TRAI Restrict Us?
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 26 September 2011, 22:49 IST
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Previously this month, the telecom regulators had made it mandatory for commercial communications to be sent between 9 am and 9 pm to all subscribers whether registered for the "National Do Not Call Registry" or not. On the other hand, you can choose for the facility which allows you to access information on any of the seven segments-banking and financial products, real estate, education, health, consumer goods, automobiles, communication and entertainment, tourism and leisure. An exception will be made in case of transaction-related messages such as those from banks, insurance companies, railways, airlines or telecom service providers for providing information related to customers or passengers. There are a few things that need to be measured. On a day to day basis very few consumers will comprehend that there is a limit as most users do not send even 50 messages a day. The brunt will be felt all through the festivals and special occasions when most people send a lot of SMSes to wish their near and dear ones. And the impact on the operators will also be the highest on these days as the discounted rates are not applicable on these days, bringing in a lot of profit. They will not be proficient enough to make much profit on other days, and will be forced to extract profit by either escalating the SMS rates or making the discount vouchers costlier, or plummeting the number of free SMSes that users get with special vouchers.
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Students, who have a preference to texting than calling as it is cheaper; individual professionals, who need to stay on clients' radars; or even a housewife sending out party invites will all be affected by the boundary. However, the law is not relevant to transactional messages, such as the balance updates sent by banks and to telemarketers registered with TRAI. Public interest messages or those about natural calamities and charities are also excused within the 160-character limit. What can help thwart this hike is the fact that the registered telemarketers are still free to send as many massages as they want, but only to people who have opted for promotional SMSes. And since the volumes here are massive it might be able to soak up the crash from the cutback in retail user generated volumes. But what impact will this regulation have on volumes? Only time will tell!

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