Drop all plans to send unlimited SMS greetings to your dear ones this festival season. As the plans of telecom service providers and bulk SMS companies targeting the festival season were subverted after the government imposed a ban on bulk SMSes and MMSes for 15 days the customers can no longer send bulk SMSes.
The ban was imposed following the spread of rumours against the North- East people and their subsequent exodus from states such as Karnataka, Maharastra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. All major service providers were gearing up with a number of offers targeting customers by sending Onam and Ramzan greetings. Though the Department of Telecoms had issued a directive to the service providers, the ban was not implemented on Saturday.
Some service providers said that the ban would be effective only by Sunday as there was no clarity regarding the ban.
“The 15-day ban on bulk SMS will badly hit the business. Festival season is a peak business time. We are expecting a loss of around Rs 75 lakh,” said S Sooraj, director of TNGiCUBE, a major bulk SMS company.
Sooraj said that imposing a ban on SMS services in unaffected states such as Kerala was absurd.
“I feel restriction must be imposed on social networking sites, instead of SMS,” he said. BSNL Thiruvananthapuram general manager Jyothi Shankar said that the ban would seriously affect business.
“Till August 30, people can sent only 5 SMS per day. This will seriously affect business, especially during the festival season. But, the post-paid customers can still enjoy unlimited SMS,” he said.
There is also a ban on sending more than 20 KB of data through mobile phones as well.
Though, doctored video clips triggering violence spread through social media, government has not imposed any restriction on it yet.