Telecom operators are reportedly lobbying the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to adopt the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India‘s (TRAI) definition of international traffic, a change that could boost their SMS revenues by over Rs 400 crore annually.
According to a report in Economic Times, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone-Idea, have sent a letter to the telecom secretary Neeraj Mittal. The letter has urged the DoT to incorporate Trai’s recommendations into existing unified license agreements and upcoming authorizations. Trai recently defined international traffic as SMS messages that originate or terminate from devices, servers, or applications located outside India. COAI believes this definition will provide much-needed clarity to the industry.
Experts predict that adopting this definition could generate over Rs 400 crore in additional annual SMS revenue for telcos by preventing the misclassification of international messages as domestic ones.
Telcos vs Amazon, Netflix and others
This push follows years of dispute between telecom operators and multinational companies (MNCs), including e-commerce giants, regarding message classification. These MNCs include Amazon, Flipkart, Netflix and others.
Telcos have alleged that some MNCs process international transactions from foreign servers but send SMS messages from domestic systems to avoid higher international SMS charges. While Trai has set domestic SMS rates between 0.2 and 0.5 paisa, international SMS rates are significantly higher, ranging from ₹2 to ₹5 depending on the origin country.
Trai’s recent recommendation clarifies that any incoming application-to-person (A2P) SMS message should be considered international if it requires the use or intervention of any device, system, or application located outside India. This move addresses the issue of various entities, including financial institutions, e-commerce firms, enterprises, cloud providers, and OTTs, using A2P messaging without revealing the SMS origin. Telcos argue that this clarity is crucial.
