Telcos to Stop SMS from Unregistered Templates Starting September 1

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed the telecom operators to stop all kinds of service and transactional messages from banks and financial instutions if their message template is not registered. This is in line with TRAI’s approach to reduce spam messages in India. Due to spam, customers fall into the trap of scamsters and often miss out on important messages too. As per TRAI’s order, SMS containing URLs, OTT links, APK or call back numbers that are not whitelisted by the telcos will not be delivered to the customers. This will come into effect starting September 1, 2024.

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This means that the banks and financial instutitions along with other businesses will have to proactively take steps to register their message templates and content before September 1, 2024. Otherwise, their SMSes won’t be delivered to the customers. At present, the telcos get the headers and the templates from the businesses. However, now they will also require the content to be submitted. This will then be verified by the telcos and only then will be sent to the customers.

Whether this will add an extra cost layer for the telcos or the enterprises is something to be considered. This means that the content and the links that are not whitelisted by the telcos will be blocked and won’t be delivered to the customers.