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TRAI to launch pilot to give mobile users control over promo messages
As part of testing, some customers whose old consents have been uploaded may receive an SMS from the short code 127000, sent by their telecom operator
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday said that a small group of mobile users will soon start receiving SMS alerts as part of a joint pilot project with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to clean up how consent for promotional messages is handled.
To be sure, this is unlikely to tackle the problem of spam, because it is restricted to the bank or banks with which the user has a relationship. Junk messages from non banking financing companies and real estate developers and pathology labs will not be filtered out.
As part of testing, some customers whose old consents have been uploaded may receive an SMS from the short code 127000, sent by their telecom operator. TRAI said customers who do not receive such messages should not worry, as the pilot is limited for now.
Each SMS will include a standard advisory message and a secure link to the telecom operator’s consent management page. From there, customers can see all the consents recorded by the banks against their mobile number and choose whether to continue with them, change them or revoke them.
“No personal or financial information will be sought at any stage,” TRAI said, advising users to respond only to messages received from the 127000 short code. Acting on the SMS is optional, the regulator added, but customers can make changes to their consents if they wish.
The pilot includes nine telecom service providers and 11 banks. According to TRAI, the exercise is also meant to check whether the new digital consent system is ready before it is rolled out across the country. The pilot project is expected to be completed by February 2026, the government said earlier.
Under current rules, the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, users can block promotional calls and messages by category, while also allowing promotions from specific businesses if they choose. These rules also provide for a Digital Consent Registry where businesses are supposed to record customer consent. In reality, this rarely happens.
TRAI said this system has not worked smoothly because many older consents were taken through paper forms or separate digital systems at outlets and were never uploaded to the registry. “This resulted in fragmented, opaque, and non-standardized practices,” the regulator said, adding that customers were also not given a way to view or cancel these old consents. Because of this, full implementation of the 2018 framework could not be achieved.
The 11 banks taking part in the pilot are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Canara Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, and Punjab & Sind Bank. Banks have now started uploading sample sets of old consents to the shared digital platform, along with any new consents they collect.
