Aawaara

Stop TRAIng idiots - You think you are here to solve problems, we will create more!

The motivation for this post is the termination charges of 5p/sms that come into effect from 25th Oct, 2011 via the latest TRAI notification, latest in the series of oppressive regulations (w.r.t to entrepreneurs). For anyone who thinks that 5p/sms isn’t much, the truth is that it almost doubles the cost, and is even more than an increase of 100% if you had high volumes.

Statutory Warning: I will not be subtle in my criticism. If you are satisfied with what you are getting, and don’t give a damn about what you may be missing, or have turned a blind eye towards killing of innovation, and the limitless possibilities that sms communication could have, this post is not for you. Please note that no one is endorsing spam here, but terminating all communication cannot be the solution to those pesky SMSes. For people who have heart aches due to name calling, you have been warned. You may choose to opt out (of all communication by subscribing to NCPR/DND list), and discontinue reading. Just ensuring that this is no unsolicited communication… ;)

The story so far:

• Airtel exits bulk sms space in september 2010
• TRAI comes up with a set of regulations in March, 2011
• Implementation postponed indefinitely due to obvious faults
• TRAI again comes up with a similar set of regulations (I still don’t know what they were doing for 6 months), which come into effect from 27th Sep, 2011
• People point out the problems and there is a lot of hue and cry. The big/small players (businesses, startups) are worried at the inherent foolishness of the regulations
• I write an email to TRAI, a minister and people in Nasscom and TIE pointing out the problems. Haven’t received a reply till date, not even an acknowledgement from anyone that the problem even exists
• Within 12 hours of the new regulations coming into effect TRAI issues an amendment that exempts the big players (facebook, twitter, linkedin, google, justdial, etc.)
• TRAI comes up with a 5p/sms termination charge that comes into effect from 25th Oct, 2011 and the money goes to the receiving network
• Ecommerce players (probably I don’t need to name the bigger players) are exempted from this termination charge
• Airtel stands to benefit the most due to the recent termination charges, as they have the largest network and they have already exited the bulk sms space (so they don’t need to pay anybody)

For those of you who still don’t get it, or are feigning ignorance, I’ll put it down it words. The inferences:

• When I first read that airtel was lobbying hard for these regulations, I wasn’t sure enough. As someone has said- the end justifies the means, and by looking at the end I am now able to connect the dots. A pure win situation for airtel and probably they will be making more money than what they would have if they were in the bulk sms space. They don’t pay anybody and everybody pays them, and they get paid more money (5p) than what the bulk sms service provider earns (2-3p) in the first place. Pure Profit!
• The regulations didn’t work, and TRAI seems to be admitting to that by introducing the termination charge, or is there something else to it. Time and again I am reminded of the fact that India is the land of opportunities is you know the right people, and have the right amount of money to spend on them. Whatever happened to that policy on fine for more than 5 violations, nobody seems to care. Do we have any data which tells us that it failed, and to justify the introduction of termination charges? Weren’t the regulations foolish in the first place? Don’t we need to correct them first before introducing new ones?
• The world isn’t fair. There are no guardian angels in the world of entrepreneurship. Everybody is for himself (maybe that’s the fun part and makes success more sweet and enjoyable). If you are a big player, good for you, and if you aren’t - $@# & off! Bad timing dude.

In your ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ - “You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain’t coming.”

So what’s next from our entrepreneur friendly government - email regulations, facebook terminations, twitter reverberations!
 

The unanswered email…[An open letter to TRAI]

Below is an email which I wrote just before the not so good (bordering foolish) TRAI regulations came into effect. The email still remains unanswered, in fact none of the people involved ever acknowledged the email or the problem itself. So I am posting it as an open letter to TRAI.

Mail Sent to:

1. TRAI 
2. A minister related to industries who is young and tech savvy enough to leave his email address on the ministry site
3. A few people in NASSCOM
4. A few people in TIE

Date: Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 10:13 PM

 
Subject: The ‘Telecom Commercial Communications Regulations’ are a blow to entrepreneurs and the ecosystem.

Dear Sir,

First things first - I too have been a victim of pesky calls and SMSes quite too often and totally agree that something needs to be done about that, but stopping all communication cannot be the solution. You need to distinguish between good communication and bad communication and treating everything the same will create problems for everyone, especially for young entrepreneurs. We already face a lot of problems everyday and this is a serious blow to the fragile ecosystem available to entrepreneurs in India.

Here are some of the problems that I think a lot of entrepreneurs in the web domain will be experiencing due to the new guidelines:

2) The transactional category is fixed and everything else is classified as promotional. We also send messages which are transactional in nature. There may be cases where the user has subscribed and paid for those messages.

4) The identifier will now we a number (unique id) instead of the short code (DM-SERVICE). That means the user does not know from whom the message is coming. Previously a user could delete spam messages without actually reading it, by just looking at the short code. Now one will have to go through all the messages to filter out useful messages from the useless ones.

The regulations completely take away an area to innovate from young entrepreneurs, which I don’t think is fair enough. The counter argument may be that if a user wants such services then he/she can unsubscribe from NCPR, but that is something like inviting spam and the user will not do so. The regulations seem to be squeezing our user base and restricting out thought process. For a normal subscriber it’s a case of - either you get everything or you get nothing, you don’t have the power to choose.

Hoping for a positive response.