Your Bank SMS Alert Charges Could Go Up From Aug

The telemarketing expenses of various businesses could go up from the next month as telecom operators are set to increase their commercial bulk SMS charges by 25 to 30 percent after the implementation of blockchain technology to check spam, an Economic Times report said.

The report said that with the surge in expenses, almost 50,000 telemarketers, third-party aggregators and resellers of messaging services who now pay 9-10 paise/SMS to telcos will now have to shell out an additional charge of 2.5 paise/SMS.

The 25-30 percent hike is also reportedly the largest ever by these telecom companies. This additional charge is to recover the cost of operations in using the blockchain technology to check the flow of unregistered SMSes and content so as to ensure that the do-not-disturb preference of customers is not violated.

The ET report cited Tata Communications' director Anurag Aggarwal as saying that the steep hike in charges will affect marketing budgets of almost every sector that uses the bulk SMS medium to send transactional, promotional or service messages to their customers every day. He further said that of the about 1 billion SMSes sent out every day in India, 60-70 percent are transactional in nature.

While brands can look at other cost affective models for the promotional traffic, the transactional SMS costs may be recovered from the customers.

Since banks charge their customers for the SMS alert services, consequently, these charges may go up from August.