Bulk SMS fee hiked by 30 pc

Telecom operators have increased the commercial bulk SMS charges by 25-30 pc following the implementation of blockchain technology to check spam SMS traffic. Due to the increased tariff the telemarketers, third-part aggregators, resellers and players like Tata communications, Videocon, Gupshup will be badly hit.

Earlier, the commercial bulk SMS use to cost around 9-10 paise/SMS and with the increased cost, they now need to pay an added charge of 2.5 paise/SMS.

The increase in the tariff will be going to impact every sector who use SMS for the promotional purpose and might also switch to other modes like OTT platforms such as Whatsapp Business Messaging to send personalised marketing content.

The move is seeing as a “death knell” for SMEd and small telemarketers who are increasingly dependent on tele-advertising in the midst of a pandemic.

Asper estimates, approximately a billion SMSes are sent via registered headers per day in India, out of which 60-70 pc are transactional in nature while the balance 30-40 pc are promotional.

The charge taken by the telecom operator to check the spam SMS is also known as the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) scrubbing charge. As it is the cost for operators to check the flow of unregistered SMS headers or content over their networks and match senders according to customers’ DND (Do Not Disturb) preferences.

Before, the Trai mandate on implementing DLT, scrubbing and blocking of unsolicited communication was done by registered telemarketers against DND data access provided to them by the regulator.

The regulation for deploying DLT has been facing a lot of criticism which includes the lawsuits filed by Paytm. Paytm in its lawsuit has alleged that Telecom comapmies and Trai has failed to ensure strict implementation of the regulation.

At the same time, telemarketers Venets Media and Insight Consultancy in two separate petitions pleaded the withdrawal of the regulation since it allows sharing of data with blockchain designer Tanla Solutions, which is also their rival telemarketer.