Telecom Regularity Authority of India. Stop bulk SMS.

27th Sep 2011: New Rule from TRAI
Telephone Regularity Authority of India.
Continuing its attempts towards protecting consumer interests, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has put forth detailed regulatory guidelines scheduled to go into effect on the 27th Sep 2011. While there are obvious benefits to the consumer, it is important to understand how these guidelines change the way we operate.

Inline are a few key highlights:

Definition of "transactional" and "promotional" messages.

All communication will be classified as transactional or promotional. Transactional messaging will use a communication pipe separate from promotional messaging.
"Transactional message" means an SMS containing only

Information sent to its customer(s) by a bank, financial institution, insurance company, credit card company, depositories registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India(SEBI) or Direct to Home(DTH) operators pertaining to the account of that customer(s)

Information given by Airlines, Indian Railways or its authorized agencies to its passengers regarding travel schedules, ticket booking and reservation

Information from a registered educational institution to its students, their parents or guardians
Exception: Any message transmitted by or on the directions of central or state government, by or on the directions of bodies established under the constitution will be exempted from the definition above.
Any message that is not an exception (per above) and does not fall under categories (i to iii) above, are strictly treated as "promotional". We will amend our policies periodically based on any changes that TRAI publishes to this classification.

What are the categories of promotional messages?
Promotional messages can be sent in the following categories.
1. Banking/Insurance/Financial products/credit cards,
2. Real Estate,
3. Education
4. Health
5. Consumer goods and automobiles
6. Communication/Broadcasting/Entertainment/IT,
7. Tourism and Leisure.

What are the messaging hours?
No commercial communication, aka promotional messages, shall be sent between 9PM to 9AM to any subscriber irrespective of the fact that such subscriber is registered on NCPR or not. There are no time restrictions for transactional messages.

Can I have a mask/sender ID of my choice?
Sender IDs are provided to a registered Telemarketer. In case you register as a Telemarketer and get telecom resources (SMS push capacity or Voice infrastructure from the operator) you can get your own sender ID. The governing rules for SMS sender IDs are as follows:
1. For transactional messages you will be asked to provide 6 alphabets. E.g. "ABCDEF". The resultant sender ID/mask will be "TD-ABCDEF" wherein the first letter "T" implies the telecom operator (in this case Tata Teleservices), the second letter "D" the service area code (in this case Delhi), the "-" is a delimiter and then the next 6 alphabets (ABCDEF) are your selected name. These alphabets can be used to identify your company / brand.
2. For promotional messages the sender ID will be 5 numeric digits. E.g. "12345". The resultant sender ID/mask will be TD-112345 wherein the first letter "T" implies the telecom operator (in this case Tata Teleservices), the second letter "D" the service area code (in this case Delhi), the "-" is a delimiter, first digit "1" denotes the category of promotional message sent and then the next 5 digits(12345) are your assigned sender ID. Category of promotional messages can be denoted by a digit (1 - 7) as explained above.

What is the penalty for non-compliance?
Non-compliance is NOT an option. Any unsolicited commercial communication that violates TRAI guidelines will be strictly penalized.
Applying resources allocated for transactional communication for promotional messaging, reaching consumers who are in the National Consumer Preference Registry (NCPR) or sending promotional messages outside of restricted messaging hours 9am to 9pm will draw escalating fines (Rs.25,000 onwards) ending in blacklisting for two years. GupShup has devised processes that can completely secure you and provide adequate safeguards for the regulation. Please see below for more information.

At any time, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions on the regulations as we work towards transitioning into the new TRAI regime.

We at GupShup have always worked to help our customers, while being 100% compliant with the regulations applicable. As we transition to the NCPR regime, we would like to update you on some key policy changes.

To our "Promotional" messaging customers:

On the 27th of September, all your accounts will be updated as NCPR scrubbed accounts and you will be prompted to accept a revised "Terms and Conditions" once you login. To address some of your concerns please note:

No additional deposits, No additional clauses, No penalties - We trust our customers and will indemnify them completely from any additional deposits, additional legal clauses or even fines. We also offer NDNC scrubbing to all our promotional SMS messaging customers. With our innovative Scrubber solution, 100% TRAI compliance is guaranteed.
Sender ID allocation - Your customers can still identify messages from you. With our sub-mask feature, you can set a "prefix" via the settings page and this will be the first word in your SMS messages.
Messaging per NCPR Categories - It is mandated that you select your category of messages on login to your enterprise account. For any message delivery to partial NCPR customers, you will also be mandated to use our templates. We urge you to take a look at the template list and write to us in advance for inclusion of any custom templates. If you are an API/SMPP customer, logon to http://enterprise.smsgupshup.com, accept revised terms & conditions and set your category, before you proceed.
Managed services - If you are a registered telemarketer and have resources procured from the operator, GupShup can help manage your messaging resources/communications.
Working hours - Given the new restricted messaging hours (9am to 9pm), we recommend that you schedule your messages earlier in the day to avoid encountering any queue related issues.

To our "Transactional" messaging customers:

Easy communication with templates - We have a detailed list of sector-wise templates. To ensure compliance you will be mandated to use these templates for all your communications. We urge you to take a look at the template list and write to us in advance for inclusion of any custom templates.
Revised agreement - You will be requested to accept our revised "Terms and Conditions" on login to http://enterprise.smsgupshup.com. Ensure that you also set the category once you login.

If you are an API/SMPP customer, logon to http://enterprise.smsgupshup.com, accept revised terms & conditions and set your category, before you proceed.

If your customers communicate on keywords, your responses to these pull messages will only be sent to Non-NCPR numbers.

We look forward to talking to each of you to explain this transition but in the meantime, if you have any specific queries regarding the policies, please feel free to contact our sales manager(s) or send us a mail on enterprise-support@smsgupshup.com . We will also have follow-on announcements so stay tuned-in.