25 MAY Delhi; Various entities such as banks, other financial institutions, insurance companies, trading companies, business entities, etc. sends commercial messages to the telecom subscribers through SMS. These entities are referred to as Principal Entities (Pes) in TCCCPR, 2018 regulations of TRAI.As per the regulatory framework, any commercial communication may only take place using registered Headers assigned to the Pes for this purpose. Header means an alphanumeric string assigned to Pes under these regulations to send commercial communications.Pes are required to get content templates registered with the Access Providers. Any commercial communication through SMS is subjected to scrubbing against the content template registered by Pes with Access Provider and, if it fails, then such SMS is not allowed to be delivered to the consumers.The TRAI has observed that some Pes have registered a large number of Headers and Content Templates and, at times, some of these are misused by some Telemarketers. To stop the same, TRAI through its Direction dated February 16, 2023, directed for reverification of all registered Headers & Content Templates on DLT platform and block all unverified Headers and Message Templates within 30 and 60 days respectively from the date of issue of Direction.
