TRAI suspends norms for commercial text messages for one week

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Taking cognizance of the disruptions in SMS and OTP deliveries for banking, payment & other transactions, telecom regulator TRAI suspended the newly-implemented norms for commercial text messages for one week.

Citizens across the country faced a major hurdle in getting one-time passwords or OTPs from banks, payment gateways, and other authentication-based critical services for the past two days. The disruption was a result of the implementation of the second phase of SMS regulations after the prolonged reluctance of telecom companies.

As part of the regulation, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has mandated the telecom companies to implement the new SMS template, which went live on March 8, 2021. The customers of telecom companies that delayed the implementation were caught unaware.

The temporary suspension of the norms would allow the telecom companies to register the new SMS template so that customers face no further inconvenience, TRAI said in a statement to PTI.

“In order to protect the interest of consumers, it has been decided that scrubbing of SMS by telecom service providers shall be suspended temporarily for seven days…,” it said.

Fraudsters use catchy and too-good-to-be-true SMS headers to dupe customers. The unique IDs known in the telecom circles are SMS headers used by various entities to push out unsolicited commercial communication. In anticipation of higher profit or services at lower cost unwary customers fall prey to these scams and lose money or personal data.

To curb rising cases of SMS frauds and phishing, TRAI was directed by the Delhi high court last month to strictly enforce preventive regulations. In the interest of customers, TRAI has implemented the process of scrubbing on March 8. Scrubbing ensures verification of SMS content with a registered templated before it is delivered.

According to the regulator, telecom operators are instructed to take necessary action and facilitate the registration of SMS templates in a time-bound manner to prevent further inconvenience to customers.

“It has been observed that some of the principal entities have not fulfilled the requirements as envisaged in Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR, 2018). As a result, their SMS was getting dropped after implementation of the scrubbing of SMS by telecom service providers,” TRAI said

As per the new regulations, telecom companies are instructed to use a blockchain-based solution to verify the content of every commercial SMS from registered sources and block unregistered messages.