Information Madness

The Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India has told all the telecommunication operators to identify and block all those violators who are sending commercial calls and messages through the internet from servers located outside India. The operators have been asked to track the web from servers outside India which are being used to send irritating and unwanted messages from telemarketers.

These telemarketers are busy playing hide and seek and cat and mouse games with the government. They are smart and going one step ahead of TRAI. Actually speaking, the government has been rather lacklustre in its efforts to enforce an effective filter mechanism for unwanted messages and calls from telemarketers. The government has been rather helpless in stifling the unsolicited calls and messages to over eighty five Crore mobile phone users even after the ban came through on such communications into force since 27^th September this year.

It was not such a big victory after all as spam was not strangled. The telecommunication operators and the concerned agencies are unable to track calls or messages sent by telemarketers through internet servers located outside India. As per TRAI, operators have already been able to track down many such violators and are blocking them. Most of the unsolicited calls and messages relate to the real estate business.

The bulk and unwanted messages market in India is worth over Rs. 335 Crore with over Rs.16, 800 Crore bulk messages being sent to mobile users each year. Service operators sell bulk SMS packages of 100,000 SMSs for cost that ranges between two thousand and four thousand Rupees.