Trai's definition identifies their traffic as international

HIGHER TARIFFS

- JATIN GROVER

THE TELECOM REGULATORY Authority of India's (Trai) recent recommendation on the definition of international traffic has come as a setback for global tech majors such as Amazon, Uber, Google, Meta and WhatsApp, as they will have to shell out a higher amount to telcos for sending SMSes to their consumers.

As per the definition proposed by Trai for international traffic, any one-time passwords (OTPs) or other transactional or promotional messages sent by these players to the consumers in India would be treated as international SMSes and charged at international tariffs and not domestic tariffs set by the telcos.

Though these firms have operations in India, telcos charge them international long-distance SMS rates because their servers located abroad are used to generate messages to consumers in India.