Communication for new DLT guidelines; measures to curb misuse of content templates and headers effective 1st March 2023

the telecom regulatory authority of india (trai), on 16th feb 2023, has issued a regulatory direction regarding measures to ‘to curb unauthorized activities using telecom resources and amendment in codes of practice’ under telecom commercial communication customer preference regulation, 2018 the copy of the direction is enclosed for your perusal this direction has a significant impact on the ways you have been managing your commercial communication on the dlt platform and across telecom networks so, we urge you to take time and go through these directions thoroughly and take needful timely actions to continue interacting with your customers seamlessly listed below are the actions, as per these directions, which are to be taken at your end immediately change action required validate the unused headers all headers that have not been used in the last 30 days or that pe has not validated will be temporarily blocked if pe cannot justify the block, the header will be released to the free pool, meaning that any other entity may register it if they can the communication is already being sent by the operators to their respective dlt registered entities along with the date for validating, albeit the validation dates may differ from operator to operator remove the old or unwanted templates and verify the required templates all content templates must be verified by pes unverified templates will be placed on a blacklist we advise you to separate the templates you wish to keep using from those you don't at your end in the interim major change in the way variables are managed just two variables are permitted in templates under the new directive; a third variable will only be permitted in extreme circumstances the direction limits the number of variables in content templates to 2, and they should also be non consecutive in compliance to this direction, operators urge you to register new templates with a permissible number of variables and start migrating your customer communication to those in case of any exigency, a 3rd variable may be allowed; however, the specific reasons are to be recorded for this third variable it is to be noted that in no case, more than a third variable is allowed in a template effective 1st march 2023, operators will not be approving any content template requests with more than 2 variables, and these 2 variables also will have to be non continuous existing templates which do not adhere to the 'variable' format as per these directions will also be deactivated shortly thereafter no consecutive variables no space or other special character may be used to separate any two variables that are sequential two variables must always be separated by fixed text re register templates adhering to the new guidelines entities to re register their templates meeting above guidelines and existing templates not meeting new directive will get blocked (timelines will be shared basis industry decision) to summarize the aforementioned points, kindly take note that operators are now reviewing any service content templates and headers registered on the dlt platform if they do not adhere to the aforementioned purpose or classification operators must, with or without prior warning to the entities, take required action on non compliant registered headers/templates if no rationale is received from the entities operators have additionally advised making sure that the templates have as much fixed language and as little changeable content as possible in order to prevent any misuse and protect the reputation of the entities' brands the restriction on templates and headers has been notified by the operators to their dlt registered entities we are closely monitoring any new changes in this area, and shall keep you informed progressively in view of the above, we once again urge you for the timely completion of the action points and activities, so as to enable us to implement the trai directions in a timely and effective manner