NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), which had last week relaxed the rule for registered telemarketers by permitting them to send more than 100 text messages a day on each SIM, on condition of paying an additional five paise per message to network operators, has now raised the limit of SMS for consumers to 200 a day.
The change has been made the relaxation on representations from some of the service providers and consumers.
Trai had also lifted the cap on banks and insurers providing information to customers, and companies communicating with employees about the delivery of goods and services.
"The limit of 100 SMS per day per SIM shall not apply to a telemarketer or entity sending transactional messages," Trai said in "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2011".
A charge on telemarketers would increase network operators‘ revenues from 0.5-1 paise per SMS to 5.5-6 paise, according to the Cellular Operators‘ Association of India (COAI). But the charge would not affect contracts agreed previously between operators and agencies sending commercial messages.
Trai had issued "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010" on 1 December 2010. All the provisions of these regulations came into force from 27 September 2011.
