The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued directions to access providers to stop the misuse of message templates, under Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018). This is in continuation of its earlier direction dated February 16, 2023, to stop the misuse of headers and message templates. TRAI has directed all the access providers that using more than three variable parts in the contents shall be permitted only with proper justification and additional checks.
TRAI has mandated that access providers shall have to designate a separate approving authority for such content templates. Each variable part needs to be pre-tagged for the purpose it is proposed to be used and a minimum of thirty per cent of the message should comprise of the fixed part so that intent of the original message, for which the content template was approved, is not changed by the intermediaries. It has also been decided that only whitelisted uniform resource locators (URLs)/ android application packages (Apks)/over-the-top (OTT) links/ call-back numbers shall be allowed in the content template. All the telecom service providers have been directed to furnish a compliance report of the above direction within 45 days.
