SMS cap increased to 20 per day

The government on Thursday increased the SMS limit from the present five to 20 with immediate effect. On August 18, the nationaltelecom operators had been asked by department of telecommunications to block bulk messages in India for a period of 15 days, due to which prepaid users could not send more than 5 SMSes per day, while MMSes with over 20kbps could not be delivered. However, postpaid users were unaffected by this ban.

Congress-led UPA government decided to curbbulk text messages as certain groups were found to be spreading hate messages against northeast Indians via SMSes and MMSes. However, this SMS cap adversely affected the daily lives of many citizens across the country as most people rely on text messages to communicate at low cost. This move will bring marginal respite to those complaining about the paltry number of messages that they were able to send each day.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India ( IAMAI) has asked the government to do away with this limit on SMSes for telemarketers since it hampers their daily business. Likewise, coaching centres also say that they are unable to inform students about the timings of their classes.

The national government has not only put a limit on messages but has also put severe restrictions on social media platforms. Over 300 webpages have been blocked by Internet Service Providers as per government directives, which cite hateful content that targets citizens from northeastern parts of India