TRAI's new Spam Call and SMS regulations inhibit the open ecosystem in the VAS industry, especially the content businesses, and give more power to telecom operators to control what is in their pipe, without holding them accountable: there are guidelines, but no punitive damanges for indiscretions and oversight from telecom operators, but allows them to punish others at their discretion. However, there is no doubt that there was abuse of the open SMS pipe in India (they had it coming), and these stringent guidelines are likely to address several issues, even if they may create more issues. From a consumer perspective, she is best placed while in the NCPR, and in a worst case scenario, will at least be able to identify the spammer if not on the NCPR. Please note that this is our reading of the regulations (with some suggestions from Mobile VAS companies that we agree with), and we're open to correction. If there are any issues we may have missed, please leave a message, or contact nikhil [at] medianama.com. So, some issues: - What about content distribution? The regulations suggests that any external party who wants to send over 100 SMS' per day is a telemarketer, and needs to register as one, in order to avail of bulk SMS rates. Without registering, they can still send SMS' at expensive P2P rates. (Thanks for correcting, Deepak) The regulations appear to take into account only transactional and commercial communication, but content is neither commercial nor transactional communication. Or is…
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