21 9 / 2011
TRAIng to get over it!
The TRAI regulations that come into effect from 27th September, 2011 are certainly a blow to me as well as BillBaba.com. Though the regulations may sound foolish, but the bitter truth is that we will have to live with them. I just received an email from my service provider stating the changes:
1) No SMS communication between 9PM-9AM. How do we take care of registrations that happen between this time? Do we send the confirmation code (and other communication) the next day? Has anyone at TRAI heard about ‘User Experience’?I don’t think so after looking at their official websites.
2) There is a pre defined set of transactional sms categories (bank, financial institution, irctc, airlines, educational institutes, DTH), everything else goes into the promotional category. Everything is legal for the transactional folks, and nothing for everyone else. What mission critical information do DTH operators send? Is there a DTH lobby at work here? I heard that the government believes in providing a level playing field to everyone.3) No opt in services. Either you are in a category, or you are not! And if you opt to receive messages of a category you invite all the spam. I thought that that the problem that we were trying to solve here was how to get rid of spam, instead of how to invite spam.
4) The identifier will now we a number (unique id) instead of the short code (DM-BILLBABA). So effectively everything goes marked as spam, and the user will have to read all the messages to separate out the good from the bad. There is no way you can tell the user upfront that the message if from you. Genuine isn’t genuine anymore! It seemed we were trying to save on time here.
Whatever the problem originally was, cutting off all communication cannot be the solution. Yes we all have been bothered by pesky calls and SMSes for too long, and the general sense prevailing may be that the regulations will act as a saviour; but this is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water!
I already heard people complaining about the startup ecosystem in India and here comes another blow. I personally think that the regulations are outrageous and lack common sense. What is everyone else planning to do? I think that a lot of people rely on genuine SMS communication. Anyone going for a PIL or EIL (Entrepreneurs interest litigation) in fact. It’s the ecosystem at stake here!
How are group buying sites dealing with this? Anyone from snapdeal?
Suggested Solution: You ought to differentiate between the different kinds of communication, and cannot regard everything as promotional. Make room for opt in services where you can put the onus of providing auditable information in case of dispute on the service provider.