TRAI suspends biz text messages norms for 1 week

New Delhi: Telecom regulator TRAI on Tuesday suspended the newly-implemented norms for commercial text messages for one week, following major disruptions in SMS and OTP deliveries for banking, payment, and other transactions.

The norms that pertain to content template checks and balances for text messages came into effect on Monday. Its temporary suspension now would give commercial entities, sending out messages and OTPs to customers, a reprieve and more time to comply with the stipulated requirements.

The move to suspend the norms would enable the 'principal entities' to register the template of SMS so that no inconvenience is faced by the customers, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a statement. "In order to protect the interest of consumers, it has been decided that scrubbing of SMS by telecom service providers shall be suspended temporarily for seven days...," it said. According to the regulator, telecom operators are being asked to inform their 'principal entities' to take immediate necessary action in this regard and facilitate their registration, including SMS template, in a time-bound manner.

The temporary suspension comes after transactions, including banking, credit card payment and certain other services that involve SMSs and OTP generation, faced a major outage on Monday, and some estimates pegged the delivery failure and delays of such SMSes at 40 per cent.