Trai suspends new SMS rules as critical texts go missing

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday suspended new rules to check spam messages after their adoption beginning Monday sparked chaos.

Several banks rushed to the regulator after failure in generating SMSes and one-time passwords (OTPs) affected services such as net banking, Aadhaar-enabled transactions, credit card payments, railway ticket bookings and vaccine registrations.

“We are giving companies and government bodies seven more days to implement the regulations. Some banks reached out to us on Monday as their customers were facing problems in receiving OTPs. For Trai, customers are a priority, and we do not want them to face problems. But it is high time companies register themselves,” a top Trai official said on condition of anonymity.