By Alfie D'Souza, Team Mangalorean

Mangalore: Last night while I was trying to send some Eid greetings by SMS to some of my Muslim friends, suddenly a message from my service provider 'IDEA' popped up on my mobile phone saying that I have exceeded my limit of 5 SMS per day. What ? When and how did this happen all of a sudden? The warning message surprised me, so I called the Call Centre of IDEA, where they gave me a explanation for that ban as per Central Government orders.

The ban will be in effect for the next 15 days or so across the Country. The reason for this ban is because there were bulk SMS circulated with misleading information about Assam violence and also to target North Eastern folks. But I think it is a good measure to protect national security. Just because we are allowed to send hundreds of SMS per day, we sometimes abuse the facility for unwanted reasons. Most of the time we irritate or disturb people who don't like to receive SMS's with unwanted messages and deviate their attention. Although I am not a regular SMS sending person, but on a given day I do send quite a few SMS's -but restricting 5 SMS per day will create some inconveniences. Oh well, I will have to bear with it, so also many of you, I guess!

According to information t hat I browsed, in a very insane move by the Indian Government, a limit of 5 sms per day has been imposed on GSM and CDMA mobile users of India. From August 18, 2012, until further notice mobile users can send only 5 sms per day to the maximum after which the messages don’t get delivered with a prompt indication from the mobile operator.

The move was made by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) to curb the spread of rumors which was meant to spread fear and to vacate North Eastern Indian’s from certain states. Home Ministry has said that the rumors led to the flee of North East Indian’s from states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra and hence the move was necessary. The rumor SMSs contained misleading information related to Assam Violence.

But the restriction does not apply on the transaction SMS related to Banking, Financial Institutions and Railway alerts. Moreover, one cannot send more than 20 KB of data, not more than 5 MMS per day as well. Not all mobile service providers have implemented this rule yet. According to some reports, the rule has not yet been implemented by Airtel, in some parts of the country.

When the 6th message was tried from Aircel, the following message was sent by the operator. “Due to Govt. directives, More than 5 SMS per day are blocked. Please retry tomorrow. Anticipate your co-operation.”

Other operators will come up with a similar message ” Hi! You have sent 5 SMS today. As per Govt. guidelines, you can’t send more than 5 SMS today. Your SMS services will be resumed post Midnight.”

No inputs about what the existing users will do about their SMS Booster Packs which allows them to send 100 or 200 SMS per day depending on the pack. The money won’t be refunded and the validity of the pack can’t be extended either! It’s a very disappointing news for Indian Youngsters! There seems to be no point in curbing the SMS limit to 5 per when already there has been a limit of 200 per day.

But the present generation is smart enough to send SMS in many other ways-there are plenty of alternatives available. If you are an Android or iPhone User, you can install Whatsapp, viber Apps for free unlimited texting over the Internet, provided the receiving User also has that App installed on their mobile with proper access to the Internet.