SMS BAN:UNAWARENESS PREVAILING

The bar on sending not more
than five SMS and MMS in a day,
which came into effect on
Saturday, surprised many
people who were not following
the Assam issue closely in the
newspapers or television
channels for the past few days.
According to an official in a
private telecom company, many
subscribers, particularly
students, contacted the call
centre and complained that they
could not send messages.
“We explained that the bar on
the number of SMS was based
on a Government of India
directive in view of the rumours
being spread in connection
with the Assam problem. We
know that many small
businessmen, advertisement
firms and others thrive on
messages. This will also lead to
a huge revenue loss for us ,” he
said.
Shankar Narayanan of T. Nagar,
who plays football with friends
every Sunday, alerts his team on
the ground availability the
previous evening via SMS. But
this Saturday, he tried sending a
group SMS to his teammates but
it was declined.
Many others suffered similar
disappointments. R. Thilaka, a
resident of Adyar, said “I send a
minimum of 25 text messages
daily. I was able to send only
four on Saturday. I received a
text message from Aircel that I
have to retry tomorrow. I had to
drop the idea of watching a
movie on direct to home service
TV as I could not SMS to order
for the movie telecast. Calling
the service provider otherwise
would mean a long process.”
After the fifth SMS from their
mobile phones, many
subscribers of Aircel received a
message from the company,
which said: “Due to Government
directive, more than 5 SMS per
day are blocked. Please retry
tomorrow. Anticipate your
cooperation…”
The limit on SMS meant making
more calls for S. Kishore, who
runs an optical store in Anna
Nagar. “ I had to call many
customers. This was quite a
burden and also expensive
because I had opted for a free
SMS plan,” he said.
Some residents however said
that they were relieved that
their inboxes were not flooded
by bulk business SMSs
throughout the day.
The Government directive was
however not enforced by a few
other service providers. “We
have not received any
instruction yet in this regard.
Since Monday is a holiday, we
may get the communication on
Tuesday,” an employee of a
company said.
Speaking to The Hindu, G. Vijaya,
official spokesperson of BSNL
Chennai Circle, said that “We
have a received a letter
regarding the ban from the
Directorate of
Telecommunication. Subscribers
both prepaid and postpaid, will
not be able to send more than
five SMS texts a day and five
MMS messages a day and each
not exceeding 25 KB.” The ban
will be in effect till September 9.
However, banks, financial
institutions and Indian Railways
are exempted from the ban.