TRAI suspends new SMS scrubbing norms for 7 days

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday quickly suspended the scrubbing of quick message service or SMS by telecom service suppliers (TSP) for seven days to permit principal entities to register their messaging templates. Trai has requested the telecom firms to tell the respective principal entities and facilitate their registration throughout the stipulated time.
Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officers will, on Wednesday, additionally meet the TSPs, Trai officers, financial institution executives, and different principal entities that ship SMSes to customers, and ask them to expedite the method of registration in order that this know-how could possibly be introduced into place as quickly as potential, senior authorities officers stated.

The motion by Trai comes after the functioning of a number of SMS-based providers of banks and e-commerce platforms was hit on Monday as TSPs carried out the second section of SMS regulation. As per Trai norms, the content material of all SMSes will now be verified earlier than it’s allowed to be delivered on the customers’ system. This course of, generally known as scrubbing, was carried out from Monday after a number of delays. The new Trai laws for principal entities, which will likely be allowed to ship SMSes to clients, search registration of senders, telemarketers, headers, content material, templates, consent templates and subscriber desire.

ExplainedContent to be verifiedAs per Trai norms, the content material of all SMSes will now be verified earlier than it’s allowed to be delivered on the customers’ system.

Trai, in 2018, launched a framework below which telcos might use a distributed ledger know-how or blockchain to confirm the sender data and content material of each business SMS earlier than it was delivered on the person’s system. All unregistered business senders have been banned from sending any SMSes by the brand new know-how.
“Blockchain will ensure two things — non-repudiation and confidentiality. Only those authorised to access details will be able to access subscriber details and only when they need to deliver service,” the then Trai Chairman R S Sharma had then stated.
Despite reminders from telcos and Trai, most principal entities or businesses that ship business SMSes had not registered themselves, following which their messages weren’t getting delivered on Monday. According to Trai, the outdated know-how and platform allowed unscrupulous telemarketers to override the said desire of the subscriber by claiming consent which will have been surreptitiously obtained.