Why Are Indians Facing Trouble Receiving OTP Messages?

TRAI has suspended the new rules for spam messages as several people are facing issues receiving OTP messages from e-commerce companies and banks. Notably, the telecom regulator has suspended the new rules for only seven days as Indian Banks Association and RBI wants the postponement.

Earlier, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said no to this request as reminders have already been sent to all telecom operators. However, after considering the request, TRAI has delayed the new regulations by seven days. "We are concerned about any customer inconvenience cases and have ordered a seven-day temporary suspension of the SMS scrubbing that was activated on Monday," a senior TRAI official was quoted by ET.

What Are New TRAI SMS Regulations?

In February this year, the Delhi High Court asked TRAI to implement new Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation to stop unwanted messages and calls that eventually lead to frauds.

TRAI also said that all messages should be verified before sending to customers and all have been registered to the TRAI Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform. It includes notifications, verification code, and all types of OTP, which are sent by the companies for making transactions.

What Is TRAI's Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Platform?

The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is a blockchain system, where telemarketers have to register themselves before sending the messages to customers. It is specially designed to control spam messages and calls from marketing firms.

The DLT platform records all transactions that have been made by all participants. The regulator also said that it is important or mandatory for all telemarketers to register on the same platform before sending any type of message to customers.

Several operators have registered or implemented the same technology on their platforms as it offers more transparency and decreases financial frauds done via messages. This is quite surprising as the DLT platform was launched even though telecom operators are offering "Do Not Disturb" services to their customers.

What Exactly Went Wrong

The new regulation was implemented on Monday (March 8th, 2021); however, it faced major disruption as people start facing issues receiving messages, OTP, and other notifications. It includes all services like getting OTP while net banking, railway ticket bookings, Aadhaar-enabled transactions, credit card transactions, and registering themselves for vaccines.

Meanwhile, the ET report said that 40 to 50 percent of services have been disrupted on the same day. "Close to 50 percent traffic percent dropped because of content scrubbing. Officials from India's top banks including HDFC and SBI are extremely furious and dialing TRAI to address the mess at the earliest," a top executive at a telemarketing firm was quoted by the newspaper. On the other hand, telecom operators said that DLT firms for the reason of the disruptions in India.

How To Be Safe From SMS Frauds

Keep checking your account balance via a toll-free number of your bank. You can also install the application of your bank and check all the activities. You can also visit your bank to check the details.