Post roll-out of the
unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) regime, telecom operators will be forced to discontinue SMS packages for their post-paid and prepaid subscribers. They have also begun reworking their strategies in the bulk SMS business segment and not let it become a loss- making proposition.
On September 27, the government had finally enforced a ban on
pesky calls and messages and imposed a five paise termination charges on commercial messages.
"It is too early to say what exactly would come out on SMS packages front. But we are definitely looking at it right now," said a senior official of a leading private telecom company, who wished to remain anonymous.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has also imposed a restriction of 100 messages per subscriber per SIM per day.
Currently, operators offer dirt cheap SMS rates for their subscribers.
These are as low as Rs 30 to Rs 50 per month.
Besides, the subscribers are also given 1,000 to 3,000 free SMSs per month.
For prepaid subscribers, operators have lower fixed rentals for SMS packages, which works out to two to three paise per message.
However, those who do not opt for these SMS packages are charged 50- 60 paise per message.
In an interesting development, some operators who had earlier opted out of the telemarketing business are now showing keenness to reenter the segment as only 13 crore of the total 85 mobile subscribers in India are registered with the Do-Not-Disturb( DND) registry.
Telecom operators like Tata Teleservices, Loop, Aircel and Vodafone have been major operators in the telemarketing business.
Operators had been pushing for deferring regulations on telemarketers.
But leading operators like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications (RCom) had opted to move out of the telemarketing business in July last year.
In fact, operators are encouraging their subscribers to opt out of the DND registry.
A Delhi-based Bharti Airtel post-paid subscriber received a message from a telemarketer stating that he could earn up to Rs 10,000 per month if the subscriber consented to receive a few thousand messages and calls from telemarketers.
The bulk and unwanted messages market is worth over Rs 350 crore in India, with over 16,800 crore bulk messages being sent to mobile users every year. The service operator have been selling bulk SMS in packages of one lakh units ranging between Rs 2,000 to Rs 4,000.
Courtesy: Mail Today 
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