India Extends "Do Not Call" Registry to SMSs

Indian mobile phone users are now able to complain if they receive commercial SMSs and they are registered with the "do not call" register. The register, which had applied only to voice calls came into effect for text messages from yesterday.

Henceforth, all commercial SMSs sent by the network operators will have to have a prefix code appended to the message so that the originating sender can be identified. This makes it easier for the regulator to respond to complaints from customers who have opted out of receiving commercial messages.

Each operator has been allocated a letter code by the regulator so that the messages can be traced to their original sender.

Ravi Ghate, founder of the Pune-based bulk-SMS provider SMSOne, told the Economic Times newspaper, "According to the mandate, if a subscriber gets an SMS from an alphabetic or numeric code, the code will be prefixed with a two-letter identification tag. The first letter will reveal the SMS centre, while the second letter will determine the circle the SMS originated from."

Posted to the site on 2nd February 2009