Trai meets bankers to iron out issues over new pesky SMS regulations

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) met with bankers on Tuesday to iron out the issues with regards to compliance with its norms on curbing the menace of unsolicited messages, sources aware of the development said.

Few banks were having issues with the template. Banks are working to fine-tune their systems so that there are standardised systems of sending SMSs, said a source.

Last week, Trai had published a list of entities who failed to implement new SMS regulations to curb the menace of unsolicited commercial messages. Among them were names such as state-owned insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation, country’s largest lender State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and a few others.

“It has been informed that principal entities, including major banks like SBI, HDFC bank, Punjab National Bank, Axis Bank, are not transmitting mandatory parameter like content template IDs, PE IDs even in those cases where content templates have been registered, while sending such messages to the TSP for delivery,” Trai said in a notification.

Trai had put on hold the implementation of its regulations to curb unsolicited commercial communication by a week as there was widespread disruption in banking services. The regulator has given the banks and other service providers one week to adhere to the regulations after customers across the country failed to receive text messages and OTPs.

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