WTF of the day : Airtel blocks MyToday’s shortcode because of the Do No Call Registry

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20 Nov 2008

Here’s an interesting story.

Big boy Airtel has decided to mess around with MyToday for a little while. They want MyToday to clear out 10% of their database which consists of people who have registered with the National Do Not Call Registry.

Airtel doesn’t care if all those people have REGISTERED to get those updates. Maybe in a few months my mom will not be able to call me because I’m in the NDNC registry.

Here is what Rajesh Jain, MD of Netcore had to say

What we are being told is that the 3.7 million MyToday database needs to be scrubbed to remove all NDNC-registered users (about 10% of the base). This just doesn’t make sense to me.

The alternatives Airtel has given us: either get in writing from the 370K subscribers that they want to get MyToday SMS channels, or get TRAI to issue a clarification on the NDNC rules they have issued. I don’t know which is more impossible! I have tried speaking to TRAI officials. All they say is that this is an issue between the operator (Airtel) and NetCore!

Way to go Airtel. Maybe if you get free from all this bull, you might start worrying about call quality and other nifty details like that, so that I don’t get disconnected 10 times in every call.

Though I’m just thinking if Airtel be sued for doing something like this or is it perfectly within the legal framework to be an as*h*le.

2 Responses to WTF of the day : Airtel blocks MyToday’s shortcode because of the Do No Call Registry

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Rohitesh

November 21st, 2008 at 9:01 am

Hmmm… Two things that I am thinking about are :

(a) To what extent is AirTel responsible for this? I mean, from their perspective, who is the easier to diss, Netcore or TRAI,

(b) If AirTel is responsible for this fiasco, how come they will (and I am sure, they WILL) get away with it, without being penalized in any way?

R

Avatar

Brijesh Tripathi

November 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

on a serious note –

seriously WTF! – i simply do not understand that if i WANT to (yes i sms mytoday to subscribe me in, i opt-in , i choose to receive sms from MyToday cause i feel the content is beneficial and i do not want to get charged by operators for similar or lower-quality content) sms from MyToday.

do i ‘unregister’ from NDNC registry ? — and open the flood gates to unwanted / spam content.

@Rohitash
why only airtel then? why has this not been the action-taken by operators across — how are they ‘diss’ ing Netcore by this or rather why is TRAI only asking airtel to do this and most importantly what is the logic behind this if one ‘chooses’ to receive a service on SMS – like mytoday’s
From a consumer perspective, these guys are providing content for free and only to those who choose to receive them — how does this whole argument come up is what is amazing.

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Gyaan Sutra is about entrepreneurship and technology. It is written and maintained by Sudhanshu Raheja, who is also the founder of Vercingetorix Technologies

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