Government raises SMS limit to 20 per day

By Kul Bhushan | Updated on 24-Aug-2012

24 Aug 2012 11:24

The government on Thursday announced easing the SMS restriction from 5 SMSes per day to 20 SMSes per day. The 15-day SMS restriction was imposed last week in a bid to stem spread of rumours that led to the exodus of North East Indians from several parts of the country. The relaxation will continue till the end of the ban.

The ministry of communications in its revised order said that other conditions will remain the same. The relaxation means users can now send maximum up to 20 SMSes in a day. And for MMSes, users can only send up to 20KB of data in one go.

“The decision to relax the permissible limit was taken after reviewing need and response of users, specifically pre-paid mobile customers who had to face a lot of problems due to restrictions from telecom operators,” an official is quoted as saying.

Earlier, the government had decided to curb circulation of provocative and inflammatory messages via social media and SMSes that led to the exodus of North Eastern Indians from different parts of the country. While the Internet companies Facebook and Twitter agreed to help the authorities in taking down such hate content, the government put a ban on bulk SMSes, restricting the number of SMSes to five per day.

The SMS restriction, however, came under fire as it only covered prepaid customers, which constitute up to 90 percent of total mobile subscribers in the country. Telecom operators feared 7-10 percent loss in revenues due to the 15-day ban. The government is now considering to develop a system that will ensure area-specific SMS monitoring instead of bringing a nationwide ban. For more, read our previous coverage.

That being said, the move to raise SMS cap to 20 messages per day is certainly a huge relief for the youth and others who extensively communicate via text messages.

Source: Times of India

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