TRAI(L) OR Error - A take on the New TRAI Guidelines

by - DigiNews Team

icture yourself present at an important meeting when suddenly, your cell phone rings and you receive it thinking its an urgent call. But it turns out that the call is from a tele-marketer trying to offer you a credit card or a home loan. I am sure it has happened to every one of us at some point of time or another.

Now apparently, such a situation is going to be a thing of the past..maybe.

When the new TRAI Guidelines came into effect, customers were happy with the fact that the Government initiative would put an end to SMS messages as well as commercial calls. But many firms, especially small start ups were against the decision as it would affect their activities.

Take a look at list of rules laid down by the TRAI:

A) From now on, telemarketers will be assigned with a special number, 140, for their calls. So, if you receive a call from a number which begins with 140, it will be a commercial call and you have the option to ignore it.

B) The TRAI has set a limit to the number of SMS's sent out from a SIM card. Now, pre-paid numbers can send a limit of 100 messages a day and post paid users can send 3,000 messages a month.

The following categories are excluded from the above rule:

1) E-Ticketing Agencies who respond to a e-ticket querry by Consumers.

2) Social networking websites.

3) Directory services like JustDial and Getit.

C) Commercial calls and messages are disbarred fro 9 P.M. to 9 A.M.

D) The TRAI has made NCPR categories under which, commercial calls can be partially or completely blocked.

The categories include:

Banks and Financial Institutions.
Communication and Entertainment.
Tourism and Leisure.
Consumer Goods.
Automobiles.
Real Estate.
Education.
Health.

E) If these rules are not followed, the TRAI will charge companies a fine of Rs. 25000 to 2.5 lacks. They may also blacklist the company for two years.

For a layman, these rules might seem to be effective enough to stop Spam calls and SMS messages.

But there is a second side to the story as well. The new rules might not be effective enough to ban all calls and SMS messages. A small loophole in the rules can let companies continue carrying out promotional activities without getting on the wrong side of the law.

The loophole can be found in the National Consumer Preference Register (NCPR) categories. The law requires users to register themselves on the NCPR List in order to block telemarketing calls or SMS'es.

To register on the NCPR list, users have to either Call or send an SMS on the number 1909. Doing so, the TRAI blocks all further promotional calls and messages on your number from the above mentioned Barred categories (Rule 'D')

Apart from a few categories carrying out transactions, all other firms sending you transaction messages or alerts will come under the blocked 'promotional' categories.

For example, if some users want their banks to send messages, they have to option to get messages from the category of 'Banks and Financial Institutions'.

Now, you may want to get messages ONLY from a particular service, but when you unlock a category, promotional calls and messages will be redirected from All service providers belonging to a particular segment. This makes the entire law absolutely useless.

Some companies may also register themselves in multiple categories which gives them further opportunity to bend the law.

There is a hindrance in the new law which lets users send only 100 SMS Messages per day, regardless of commercial or non-commercial usage.

There might be a time when certain users want to send a text message to over a 100 contacts at any given point. But now, this will not be possible to do.

Apart from this, there is a ban on messages from 9 PM to 9 AM. This can be a problem for users who have applied to services that send them messages during the particular time frame.

Many firms are getting their way round the rules by asking users to register themselves in their categories. Bulk SMS provider service 160by2.com has boldly put up on its Blog Page that users should DE-register themselves from the NCPR altogether.

Even after the law being formed, the TRAI has done very little to promote the initiative. Many people are still unaware of the NCPR and continue to receive calls and messages from tele-marketers on a daily basis.

It is very early to predict whether firms would stick to the law or shy away from it. But, by the looks of it, the new TRAI guidelines are not going to make much of a difference to the already harried consumers.