Soon after TRAI issued a mandate to telecom VAS providers to seek approval from customers before billing them for certain, Airtel has launched a service that promises more control to the user. Called Start/Stop, the service has been officially launched last Monday. Around 40 VAS providers and short code owners (who in turn have more offerings) who deal with Airtel have been asked to be compliant with Start/Stop, Rajesh Razdan, Founder, MCarbon told Medianama. MCarbon has implemented the first phase of Start/Stop for Airtel and will eventually hand it over to IBM, which manages all the customer-facing systems for Airtel. The Start/Stop Service Start/Stop will allow Airtel users to manage value added services on their mobile - those offered by Airtel (on-deck), as well as third party subscription VAS (off-deck or Direct to Consumer) - users can now unsubscribe from individual VAS by sending an SMS to toll-free short code 121. Customers will be taken to an interface which will show them all the Value Added Services to which they are subscribed. They can then choose to subscriber or unsubscribe from the services using an interactive SMS session which will confirm their response. You can view a demo of the service here. Currently available only on 121, the company is also planning to extend this to Airtel's short code 54321. Do Not Disturb This is not the first attempt at offering more control to the mobile user. Besides all operators offering Do Not Call/ Disturb services, a national Do Not Disturb directory was created…
