Indian Mobile Marketing Business experiencing fall in business post stringent regulation

The regulatory effort to protect Indian wireless and wired subscriber privacy as well as to enforce regulation started to show positive impact after 5 years of effort. In recent months, Indian regulators warned few wireless operators to twist their networks identify, block and initiate action against telemarketing flaunting regulatory compliance forced Mobile marketing tools as well as service provider to remodel their service offering. The “Telemarketing and SMS based promotional activities are termed as Wireless Enterprise Mobility” by few service providers raised their concerns regarding fall in business post enforcement of Do not Disturb, Increased termination charges and termed regulatory moves as showstopper act. I am surprised to observe that none talked about consumer pain and overall benefit of regulation on wireless ecosystem. I also carry reservation in terming Telemarketing calls and SMS based promotional calls as wireless marketing because all kind of wireless service must be supported with subscriber consent. The current solution offerings neglect consumer side.

Indian User Opinion about Pesky Calls and SMS – Lack of Awareness and Social Responsibility Adherence

Recent weeks print media is full of articles around pesky calls and SMS monster which is taking centre stage in most not all communications from regulators. Regulators are proposing stringent fines across ecosystem players involved in supporting pesky calls and SMS. Post multiple blog article posted by me on different social sites to professional sites to increase awareness about negative impact of pesky call and SMS engineering, I realised that Indian subscribers are least bothered about happening around them. I thought of another approach to figure out the unsuccessful enforcement of regulation and esteemed Indian subscribers opinion about the same. Post talking with more than 200 very educated, professionally successful, well-known names in their respective sectors; I reached to the following conclusion

• Not aware of processes to take on pesky caller and SMS originator
• No one want to get into legal process
• Even NDNC subscriber told that nothing is going to improve so it’s useless to talk about it
• No one ever launched any complaint but proudly admitted that they are getting multiple calls and SMS on daily basis
• Other few opinion were very crude and prefer not to share the same

If Industry especially Telco’s are losing Billions of $ then Telco must be part and parcel of awareness program. At the same time, there must be participation by corporate world to increase awareness among their employee about the Pro’s and Con’s of pesky calls and SMS on personal and professional information management. Government may consider stringent information technology centric regulation and announce heavy penalty on companies giving business to mass product marketing companies without adhering to government regulation.

Average pesky call and SMS complaint by registered user per month is too low to deter illegal players

Telecom State Minister came out with average monthly complaint rate against illegal telemarketers and SMS spammers. The number quoted by honourable minister was “27760”. For normal citizen of India, any attempt by subscribers to complain against pesky calls or SMS during assessment, the current scenario is completely different. If 161 Mn plus registered NDNC users are only sending above mentioned number then we must accept the fact that any news report on different print media is completely exaggerated, Isn’t it? It depicts that only fraction of percentage of NDNC users are filing complaint. I believe government regulators must have done analysis better than us and must be worried that how pesky calls and SMS spamming is going out of hand. The sooner we wake up, the better it would be for country. Post survey, the conclusion is very Simple ‘NDNC does not work and its hopeless service. Being a user, I am going to pick up call from Unrecognized calling number” The approach is escapist one not head on approach. We need to take on the issues head on instead of taking back seat.

Pesky calls and SMS issue in India can be resolved through Social responsibility act only – Act before it hit your information

Recently, TRAI got very active to completely eradicate pesky calls and SMS to offer and protect privacy of Indian subscribers. TRAI came out with 11^th amendment around unsolicited commercial communications to send across warning bells within service ecosystem. According to Newspaper Hindu Business line article Tata- Tele, Reliance Communications and Aircel were served warning from regulators to make all necessary arrangement to monitor pesky calls and SMS generation through their network by rouge telemarketers and SMS service providers. Two years back Bharti Airtel stopped their bulk SMS service to offer privacy and QoS of their subscribers but unfortunately the big three of Indian Telecom sector Bharti Airtel, Idea and Vodafone India suffering the most because of their subscriber target base.

In another report in Economic Times, the new mechanism of bulk flooding of SMS using GSM Modem attached 100’s of SMS SIM’s and every SIM are calibrated to send only TRAI limit of daily SMS.

Important to Note that, the above mentioned process of acquiring 100’s of SIM for commercial purpose highlight major security flaws in the verification process of subscribers. It raises following questions and believe that being citizen, subscribers, Enterprise and service provider, we all should take 2 min to think about it

1. How rouge players are managing to acquire so many SIM’s?
2. Is there any flaws in SIM and Subscriber authentication process or
3. Who is giving rouge player’s business for Telemarketing?
4. Are regulators focusing in penalizing advertisers to use rouge players?
5. Is it effective to disconnect mobility connection and bar particular subscriber for 2 years?

In my point of view, the advertisers and pesky calls and SMS providers must be penalized heavily to start with.

Request reader to own up social responsibility and share article to increase awareness among our innocent subscriber base. If we all want to see India growing through differentiated approach, then we all must be united the way we follow when there is any threat on our boarders. Thanks in advance for your

Serious attempts by Department of Telecommunications, India to control pesky calls – Considering Imposing Heavy Fines for Each pesky calls

Department of Telecommunication, India tried all methodology to control pesky call and SMS to offer privacy to subscribers. Even service providers invested millions of $ to upgrade their network attached system   to tackle the nuisance of pesky calls and SMS to their esteemed customer base.The end losers are service providers as they are struggling to shore up customer QoS and Privacy clause. The recent flurry of high level  meeting in DoT and TRAI followed by the head of Service provider meeting with regulator got everyone into action.The TRAI directives to service providers to refine network KPI’s to identify and block pesky and SMS seems very difficult as the illegal pesky caller and bulk SMS providers are one step ahead in thinking to find the weak spot of the network to bypass the monitoring tools.The P&G department requested feedback on right to privacy bill from DoT and proposed to slap 20K INR for every ICC calls by telemarketers.The department is also considering intercepting to phone calls in order to establish the phones calls from telemarketers to end subscribers

The department is also considering blacklisting and UCC caller won’t be able to own mobile connection for 2 years.It would be interesting to see “what mechanism TRAI and Service Providers” would propose to eradicate billions of UCC messages and calls from network.

I can only offer best wishes to BFSI, Real Estate sector as that sector would be hit hard. Also the highlighted issues by Service providers and DoT are only 10% of the existing concerns around pesky calls and SMS.

One Nation –One License -Free Roaming Policy offer India Full MNP vision achievement

In approved NTP 12 document, the Indian government clearly stated long term vision for telecom sector - to exploit the already built foundation to create unprecedented communication reach across Indian geographies. It also set very aggressive targets on teledensity, potential network deployments to serve and offer Indian people very cost effective communications services.

I have already highlighted in my earlier blog posts, MNPRegulation – Regulator’s Vision Verses Reality and UnrealisticNational Telecom Policy vision to achieve 70% Teledensity by 2017 & 100% by2020, the current pattern of broadband and logical challenges in achieving the set goal by the government. But the most interesting vision is to

1. Strive to create One Nation - One License across services and service areas.
2. Achieve One Nation - Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation -Free Roaming.

The above mentioned clause took telecommunication service providers by surprise and it is even more surprising when there was lack of visibility on the licensing issues.

Currently, Two MNPO’s are managing dipping database and service providers in the respective zones and are integrating their networks through centralized database development to get the real time update.

In a current scenario, the mobile user can only make donor to receipt mobile operator switch within their current service geography or circle.

Is there a need of “Full MNP” when one license across services and service area is going to be implemented?

In a scenario of national roaming abolishment; Intra circle roaming would be abolished and all operator level switch would not be limited to specific circle level. Once intra circle level roaming under one license regime comes into force, it would automatically enable ported out user free movement and flexibility of keeping same MSISDN across service geography. It would automatically offer full MNP across recipient’s mobile operators’ service geographies.

The mobile operators would be forced to pay carriage fee in order to correctly connect and deliver voice call and SMS respectively. On the capex and opex front, the Mobile Operator’s, International Long Distance Operator’s would be forced to remodel centralized ported user database, SMS aggregation platform as well as realign their service logic and business logic in order to correctly redirect voice and SMS traffic. I have not seen any updated regulatory document about the changes required to be done on the dipping database update side.

Even more surprising that regulator are in consultation with stakeholders, post deciding on the policy without zeroing in on the licensing, potential solutioning impact on the user and network performance and cost attached with it.

In my point of view, free roaming would remove the need of Full MNP. The existing mechanism of limited MNP would automatically be extended to Full MNP. The regulators may opt for the clear specifications defining all the raised concerned points by the stakeholders to reduce the revenue loss fear and associated cost. The consultation regarding the licenses and associated cost, post policy approval is bit surprising. I must stress that there are multiple hidden business opportunities for ecosystem stakeholders out of the unwarranted challenges around Full MNP and free roaming.