The SMS Glitch - An India TV report stated ‘TRAI has temporarily delayed the new SMS rules by seven days after many customers faced problems with OTP transactions earlier this week.’
But what is this regulation?Let’s delve into it!
We often get frustrated by constant messages of certain companies which aren’t related to us at all, to curb this menace of unsolicited Messages to customers, TRAI came up with Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCCPR).
But what used to happen before this act came?
TRAI had come up with a ‘Do Not Disturb (DND)’ list, wherein, any user who wanted to stop messages or calls from certain companies could flag that number in this list and then could inform others through crowd-sourced data (same as marking SPAM in the true caller).
But as every problem has a solution, the same way, every law has a loophole.
Marketers used voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) technology to make these unwanted calls and went out of the scope of this law. To solve this problem TCCCPR was brought in 2018 wherein distributed ledger technology (DLT) was to be used.
Now, what is DLT?
DLT is a blockchain network (same used for cryptos), where all information of customer’s preference is stored. Each telecoms firm has one or more nodes on the DLT network that stores a hash of the consents as well as preference for all subscribers. Now suppose if Brand’X’ has to send a promotional message to a person, then it has to first register itself and pre-approve its message by sending telco with its ‘content’ and ‘heading’ with which message will be sent. The sending telco then verifies it and stores it in its blockchain for further scrutinization by subscriber Telco, when all is clear then the message gets sent.
This took 2 years to develop and was implemented on 8th March 2021, however, upon implementation, it faced certain glitches because of which out of a total 1 billion SMSs nearly 40% dropped on day 1 and 33% on day 2, to this, TRAI suspended the SMS filter for 7 days and this is how this article started.