Unlimited text messaging is something many of us no longer treat as a luxury. It’s just another thing we add into our monthly bills along with our DVR, Netflix, and premium Spotify account. But what if the government started limiting the number of text messages we could send each day? The telecommunications regulator in India has done just that, and put a cap on the number of texts it will allow a mobile phone user to send each day.
The telecoms regulator will limit texts to 100 per SIM card for prepaid cards, or 3,000 per month for post-paid connections. A hundred texts a day may seem like a lot, but a recent Nielsen study showed that teens in the U.S. send 3,339 texts per month, which equals out to about 111 texts per day during a 30-day month. Other age groups didn’t send nearly as many texts. The average 18- to 24-year-old sends 1,630 texts per month, which averages out to about 54 texts per day.
So why is India putting a limit on its text message numbers? Being the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, India has more than 700 million subscribers, and is prime material for telemarketers. It seems the country is suffering from a slew of telemarketing firms that are spamming mobile phone users via text messages. Millions of mobile phone users are apparently receiving “dozens of unsolicited text messages every day.”
Indian telemarketing firms caught sending out text messages to subscribers who register their numbers on the national “do not call list” were told they’d receive heavy fines. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India also made a rule against sending texts or calls between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., but that only prolonged the inevitable, and texts came pouring in late at night.
The number of unsolicited calls did go down significantly after the TRAI launched the “do not call” registry in 2007, but the number of text messages seemed to go up exponentially since then. Here’s hoping that by limiting texts to 100 per day, telemarketing firms won’t be able to send out as many spam texts.
via BBC, image courtesy of Meanest Indian
Qualcomm Quanta Computer Research In Motion Rogers Communications Saic Satyam Computer Services Ses
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου