The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued a directive which makes it necessary for certain Mobile Value Added Services to be billed only on the explicit consent of the customer. The customer will have to provide her consent by either calling a specified number, sending an SMS to a particular number, an interactive session to a specified number or a request in writing, fax or email. This is applicable to services which are offered through pressing certain keys on the mobile handset - including the Press Star (*) To Copy and services initiated by outbound dialer calls. Implications Press Star (*) To Copy is a service that OnMobile Global showcased as one of it's key innovations on the consumer front - it made it easier for consumers to subscribe to ringback tones by just pressing the * key. Similarly, outbound dialers activate certain services by asking consumers to press a specified key or a combination of keys. Subscription to VAS services is an impulse decision, and a formal consent like the one mandated by the TRAI will take the "impulse" out of the purchase. One can expect subscriptions to VAS services via Outbound Dialers and to Press (*) To Copy to decline. One VAS industry executive suggested to us that this is going to impact rural subscriptions the most, since the new subscription format is complicated. Download the directive here. Alternatives Vijay Shekhar Sharma, MD of One97 Communications has written on their company blog that he doesn't think outbound dialers…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...