Global companies such as Truecaller, Amazon and Uber are likely to urge the department of telecommunications (DoT) to not expedite approval to recommendations by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on international SMS traffic. The tech firms claim that even if they are global companies, their servers are hosted in India. Therefore, the SMSes are sent from domestic servers and do not have international origin.
This is yet another bone of contention between tech firms and telcos. Currently, tech firms are charged international long distance SMS rates as telcos claim that the messages are generated from servers located abroad. Experts, however, say there is no mechanism for telcos to check if the flow of SMSes is coming from outside India.
“We will soon make our representation to DoT that international SMS rates do not apply to us as from origination to delivery of SMS happen in India,” an executive at a global firm said, adding that global companies are charged even if they have no link to international origin of SMS.
Another executive said while Trai’s recommendations give much-needed clarity on international SMS traffic, there should be a clause or mechanism wherein global companies with end-to-end domestic SMS origination and delivery are charged local rates.
Notably, the crux of the issue lies in higher charges for international SMSes by telcos. International SMS tariffs at `5-6 is over 40 times higher than the domestic tariffs of around 13 paise per SMS.
In its recommendations, Trai accepted telcos’ arguments that international SMSes are usually camouflaged or mirrored as a domestic SMS through technology intervention by global companies.
According to Trai, any incoming application-to-person (A2P) SMS message shall be treated as international, if it cannot be generated, transmitted or received without the use or intervention of any electronic device, computer system or computer application located outside India.
Telcos argue that the servers of tech firms are located outside India and they trigger A2P SMSes such as OTPs, KYC-related or promotional messages. Such A2P SMSes are routed to India via internet/leased lines, which enter into Indian PSTN (public switched telecom network) using their media gateways/mediation servers located in India.
Executives at tech companies said they are ready to give a self-declaration that the servers located in India are used to send SMSes. However, there is a concern that telcos will continue to treat them as international SMSes as their revenues might get impacted. This is why the government needs to have a prudent approach, an executive said.
In a letter dated January 8 to telecom secretary Neeraj Mittal, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said DoT should accept Trai’s recommendations, and incorporate the definition of international traffic and domestic traffic via suitable amendments in the existing unified licence agreement as well as in the rules/terms and conditions associated with the various upcoming authorisations.
COAI said various entities, including financial institutions, e-commerce companies, enterprises, cloud platform providers and OTTs that use the A2P messaging channel to promote their products, notifications, promoting sales, do not reveal the origin of the SMS.