Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had made a public list of SMS blackout days in 2012 approved by the telecom service providers. This list contains details of blackout days in each telecom circles like Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala etc, with the service providers in the circles like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Docomo, Idea Cellular and others. This list also specifies the services, which will be affected on the blackout days such as SMS, Voice, GSM or CDMA.
Last year TRAI 200 SMS per day restriction, have an exception for certain ‘Blackout days’, wherein the 200 SMS/day cap was not followed and this allowed the telecom operators to charge normal SMS rates or hiked rates from the users. So to help out the users TRAI have made this list of blackout days in 2012. The list contains details of blackout days by following operators Bharti Airtel Limited, Reliance Communications Ltd (GSM – Prepaid & Posatpaid), Vodafone India Limited, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, TATA Teleservices Limited (CDMA) (Postpaid Mobile and Walky) including Tata Docomo, Sistema Shyam Teleservices Limited (MTS), Loop Mobile Limited, Uninor, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Aircel, Idea Cellular Limited, Stel and Videocone Mobile Services.
Most commonly all telecom operators in India, have declared SMS blackout days on New year – 1st January, Valentine’s Day – 14th Feb, Holi – 8th March, Friendship Day – 5th August, Diwali – 13th November, New year’s Eve – 31st Dec in most of the telecom circles. In some telecom circles, operators have extra blackout days, like in in Jharkhand telecom circle, MahaNavami is a blackout day for BSNL only, not for other providers. In kerala most of the telecom providers have declared blackout days on Onam and Vishu.
It seems to be a good attempt from TRAI, to inform the users about the blackout days, as it will definitely help them from accidentally sending out SMS on that days and losing money. What do you think about this TRAI initiative, so comment your views on it.