Bulk SMS Ban: A Knee-jerk Reaction

Seen politically, the government never appears serious in addressing issues like infiltration and the resultant communal conflicts

Traditional to Indian government’s approach to addressing crises of any scale and any kind, the recent ban on sending of bulk SMSes and MMSes appears to be a poorly thought-out and a knee-jerk reaction by the government.

Seen politically, the government never appears serious in addressing issues like infiltration and the resultant communal conflicts. The recent violence in Assam and the subsequent exodus by the north east people across the country portrays poorly managed administration, both by state and central government.

Though the government has failed to stop the exodus as thousands of north eastern people are boarding ‘special’ trains to reach their homes, the government on August 18 banned sending of bulk text messages in order to control the rumors being spread over telecom networks that north easterners would be attacked.

The exact wordings of the directive that Ministry of Communications & IT, Mepartment of Telecom sent out to telecom operators are:

“(a) Block bulk SMSes (more than 5) for the next 15 days in the entire country across all states/UTs.

(b) Block bulk MMSes (more than 5) and all MMSes with attachments more than 25 KB for the next 15 day in the entire country across all states/UTs.”

However this restriction does not apply to SMSes/MMSes with respect to transactional messages related to institutions such as banking, financial, and railways.

This created a lot of confusion not just among consumers but also among operators. The initial directive asked the operators not to allow consumers to send more than 5 SMS/MMS at a go. However this failed in reaching the objective of checking ‘hate’ messages being