In the past month, the actions of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India have systematically put hurdles for the businesses of most companies in the field of SMS platform provisioning and digital marketing. This is reminiscent of the past when the government could make or break a company’s fortunes.
It started with the NCPR regulations which came into effect last month on September 27. Despite criticism from industry players, the flawed rules were imposed. Arbitrary distinctions between transactional and promotional messages were not corrected despite industry feedback. Random limits of 100 messages per mobile number were introduced.
That was not enough. On September 27 itself, TRAI amended the rules by introducing exceptions for a few named companies. Note that. Named companies, not even categories. If that isn’t an example of the old licence raj, I don’t know what is.
The story doesn’t end there.
Continued tomorrow.
