The decision to implement the second phase of SMS regulation by telecom companies in India resulted in the disruption of critical services, Economic times reported Monday. People are struggling to get one-time passwords or OTPs from banks and e-commerce companies for payments, and the Aadhaar authentication service has also collapsed.
The Delhi High Court last month ordered the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India to strictly ensure that telecommunications operators enforce regulations to end the use of unsolicited commercial communications and using fake SMS headers to deceive customers. SMS headers are unique identifiers by which commercial text messages are sent.
As per the guidelines of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India, every SMS content with a registered template should be checked before it is delivered. This process is known as cleanup and was implemented on Monday after several delays.
To control SMS fraud, a blockchain-based solution is used by telecom operators to verify the header and content of every commercial SMS from a registered source, according to Economic times. During this time, unsaved messages are simply blocked.
Defending their system, operators attributed the disruption of SMS traffic to lax companies in adopting regulatory standards. “Almost 50% of traffic is down due to content cleanup,” said an unidentified senior executive at a major telemarketing company. Economic times. “Officials at major Indian banks, including HDFC and SBI, are extremely furious and are calling on TRAI to fix the mess as soon as possible.”
Operators also give telemarketers and individual businesses the responsibility of complying with established standards to keep services going smoothly. “The Delhi High Court has ordered the settlement to be implemented quickly,” another senior telecommunications official said. Economic times. “We’ve done our part and activated the content cleanup process. Despite the abundant time given to companies, if they continue to crib for not being prepared, it is not [the] the fault of the telecommunications companies. “
An official at A2P or an app-to-person messaging company said it was a “crazy situation” so far. “This is exactly what we feared is happening today,” the official said, the newspaper reported. “Even normal promotional messages get scrapped by small content changes like a dot. [The] TRAI must intervene and remedy the situation as soon as possible because if they do not, ultimately RBI [Reserve Bank of India] will.”