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On Tuesday, TRAI issued a notice to direct all telcos to “immediately” allow porting out SMS for all subscribers, regardless of the plan the user has.
TRAI Mandates Allowing Porting SMS for Telcos
Last week, after the telcos had raised 4G prepaid tariffs, Reliance Jio reached out to the sector regulator. It stated that Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have not offered SMS service in their cheapest plans to create a “porting barrier” and stop customers from porting out.
According to sources aware of the events of the meeting, Reliance Jio had suggested three solutions regarding porting.
- First, the regulator should make porting SMSes free, irrespective of the plan.
- Second, the regulator can mandate SMS service across all plans offered by a telco.
- Third, a new mechanism for portability, one which does not require sending an SMS.
Taking the first option, TRAI said, “the Authority hereby directs all access service providers to enable, with immediate effect, for all mobile subscribers, both prepaid and postpaid, requesting for a unique porting code, the facility to send SMS on shortcode 1900, in order to exercise their right to avail porting facility… irrespective of the value of the tariff offers/vouchers".
In the statement, TRAI further added, "the Authority is of the view that this practice of non-provision of the facility of sending MNP related SMS in certain pre-paid vouchers/plans is in contravention of the provisions of MNP Regulations, as it takes away the consumer’s right, provided for in the regulations, to avail mobile number portability facility".
TRAI said that it had received complaints that users were unable to send the porting SMS on shortcode 1900; some of those users even had enough balance in their accounts.
Incidentally, none of the telcos have an SMS facility in their sub-Rs. 100 plans. The current issue has made it a second time when the telcos have tried to stem portability. Earlier, TRAI had to ban the telcos from offering any differential tariff plans outside of their usual plans.