TRAI urges banks, telemarketers to comply with regulations to check unsolicited SMS

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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday called on the major banks and big telemarketing firms for their failure to comply with the with the new SMS regulation norms which check spam and filter unsolicited messages despite, multiple reminders.

"Unfortunately, despite repeated communication, all major banks and big telemarketers sending SMS have failed to fulfill regulatory requirements. All are being notified individually also," TRAI said in a statement.

TRAI has been, through, Telecom Service Providers (TSP), communicating with the principal entities to fulfill the regulatory requirements, it added.

The new regulations, or the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), were introduced in July 2018 to  to curb the menace of  unsolicited commercial messages. The regulations entirely came into force February 28,2019.

"Major reasons observed for not meeting the regulatory compliance are content template not registered, content Id missing, mismatch in template registered and message sent etc.," TRAI said.

The regulatory provisions not only help in preventing spam but also help in preventing fraudulent messages purporting to originate from banks, financial institutions, or other trusted sources. It also helps the principal entities to enhance it reach by registering the consent of the customers, the regulatory body added.

"TRAI, hereby, once again requests all the entities who are using the telecom resources to send bulk messages to the consumers, to fulfill the regulatory requirements immediately so that there would not be any disruption in the communication to the customers," the statement said.