Indian Telecom regulator announced
two new regulations that will be applicable from 1st June 2013. The new regulation
includes SMS termination charges based on cost fixed at 2 paisa whereas sets a transnational SMS charge of 5 paise per transnational SMS.
In changed scenario, the current
formulation agreed between different Access Provider at different price point
and bill & keep mechanism would be replaced with cost based fixed charges.
The move is interesting as TRAI
is also trying to bring UCC (Unsolicited Commercial Communication) under
control and incumbent advocated that regional players are selling bulk SMS and
partly responsible for UCC traffic. In order to reduce the UCC, they advocated rigorously
increasing termination charges to make bulk SMS unattractive.
Recently, TRAI also released clear directives
to access provider to initiate all process and network optimization to stop UCC
to improve subscriber privacy.
In my point of view, the SMS
termination charges for both P2P and Promotional one is going to give UCC
originator an opportunity to remodel their pricing model as the current set
charges are still very low compared to A2P messages. I request reader to share
their opinion.
