TRAI again

Anyone with a cellphone in India knows the epic frustration of dealing with SMS-spam,those unwelcome pitches for real estate and sauna belts,promises to cure your nervousness of speaking in public,offers to find you friends,and heads-up on irrelevant sales. They rudely insert themselves into your personal space,with no regard for time or mood.

And now the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has smacked down on these practices with a sweeping injunction — the National Customer Call Preference Registry (a do-not-disturb directory),which allows consumers to opt out of these annoying calls and texts. You can fully block all commercial communication,or choose differential levels of availability to information on different segments,like banking,real estate,communication and entertainment,etc. However,TRAI has also let its mission carry it away. It has imposed an absurd fiat,trying to to muzzle text-spammers by capping text messages at 100 a day. Though that sounds like a pretty generous limit,and it has also exempted social networks,directory services,ticketing agencies,etc.,after the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) protested the curbs,this cap is still an entirely wrong-headed move. It places restrictions on the consumer who was being harassed in the first place,instead of effectively blocking the problem from the other end. The telecom regulator should not try and impose limits on the volume of personal communication — it’s a user’s free choice,that she pays the carrier for. Most young people are avid texters,rather than phone-callers. India is an SMS-oriented cellphone culture,given that they used to be relatively cheaper than phone calls in the early years of the telecom boom. Besides,who is TRAI to decide how many sweet nothings should be sent over SMS per couple,or how much professional communication is transacted through a to-the-point text message rather than a phone call? And what if it’s crucial to send that 3001st message? The point is,while TRAI might think that limiting the number of text messages will solve the problem by shifting the responsibility to telecom operators,it will end up making users pay for their own deliverance.

Obnoxious as text-message marketing is,regulatory overreach is worse. TRAI should not turn on consumers for its own failure to control telecom companies and telemarketers.