Commercial SMS traffic grows by up to 20% despite recent price hike by telcos

The daily commercial SMS traffic in India has grown by up to 20% currently, owing to increased digital adoption post pandemic, even as the overall text messaging continues to decline, according to industry estimates.

According to industry estimates, currently, around 1.3 billion commercial SMSes are being sent every day – even after absorbing a 30% hike in SMS tariffs taken by telecom operators in September -compared to nearly 1.1 billion sent in March. The rise comes after a marginal drop during the lockdown period due to shut down in retail, aviation, travel, tourism and other sectors.