TCCCPR, 2018: Filtering to Resume but Messages to Go Through

TRAI implemented Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018, on last Tuesday. However, due to much resistance and a flurry of court cases, it had to put the same on hold the same day. However, these new regulations will resume today and telcos have started scrubbing the SMS content midnight onwards.

Interestingly, SMSs are going through regardless. This comes as a relief for the industry as it was bracing for another round of SMS outages.

Recent Developments on Content Scrubbing

About 400 million SMSs went undelivered, including critical OTPs from banks and other services after implementation. After much resistance from the industry, TRAI had grant a seven-day extension, which ended midnight Tuesday. TRAI noted, in a letter to telcos yesterday, that the operators must “resume the (content) scrubbing as envisaged and in case of failure of the messages due to any reasons including content ID, mismatch of template etc. same may be recorded. However, message may be allowed to deliver to the recipient.”

In short, the traffic will go on uninterrupted but operators kept a record of the SMS templates and their compliance. TRAI has asked for a report from the telcos regarding the same. The said report must indicate the percentage of traffic that failed during scrubbing along with reasons. Also, the regulator has asked operators to send the same report to the registered entity/telemarketer. Furthermore, the telcos will submit a summary to the regulator on Tuesday and Friday. Afterwards, TRAI will review the scrubbing performance.

What is TCCCPR, 2018?

Content scrubbing, or filtering, refers to verifying SMS content using pre-registered templates. This involves a blockchain method of matching an SMS's header and content with the allowed templates. Previously, if an SMS failed the content scrubbing it did not go through. Now the telcos are just monitoring the status and allowing the messages to go through. Sources report that so far, almost 1.2 million templates have been whitelisted by telcos and TRAI. That means that only a few hundred thousand remain to bring 100% of the traffic in the whitelist.

Notably, the telcos and TRAI are under great pressure to implement the regulation. It was first passed by the apex regulator in 2018 and Hon'ble Delhi HC has directed them for swift implementation.

Multiple companies asked for an extension till the end of April. But, given TRAI's situation there will not be further extensions. It all depends on the telecom operators' report and what TRAI will do with it.