India's new SMS limit: 100 texts per day

From now on, no one in India will be able to send more than 3,000 text messages per month, or an average of 100 texts per day, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) announced today.

Exceptions are e-ticketing agencies, social networking sites and dealers of telecom operators. 

According to reports TRAI receives 40,000 complaints about telemarketers every month.

Even though the national do-not-call registry was introduced in 2007, with 130 million subscribers, it proved largely ineffective after many telemarketers resorted to sending bulk SMS messages instead.

But one day Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was interrupted in parliament by a telemarketer. And the rest is history.

India has 900 million mobile phone subscribers and an estimated 75 million bulk messages are sent out every day, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

"The main objective is to ensure that consumers do not get commercial communications of promotional nature unless they have specifically opted for receiving them," TRAI said in a statement.

But to many this is overkill, potentially blocking useful updates from news websites or traffic updates.

Among the exemptions are e-ticketing agencies responding to e-ticketing requests from travelers,and SMS messages from social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn and Google+ in connection with account-related activities. Agencies providing directory services, such as Just Dial, ZatSe, Callezee, Getit and Askme also escape the ban, TRAI added.

The limit will also not be applicable on “blackout days” such as festive occasions.

"Subscribers have the option of choosing to be under the 'Fully Blocked' category, which is akin to the 'Do Not Call Registry'," reported the Hindustan Times.

"If a user selects the 'Partially Blocked' category, he or she will receive SMS messages in categories chosen."

"For registering under the 'Fully Blocked' list, a customer has to SMS 'START 0' to 1909."