Great news for all Mobile phone users, coz from now onwards users will be able to send 200 text messages a day as sector regulator TRAI has doubled the daily cap after it received representations from consumers and service providers to relax the limit. TRAI had introduced the 100-SMSes a day cap to stop unsolicited and pesky text messages from telemarketers selling everything from real estate to weight loss solutions. The cap also put an end to subscribers using multiple SIM cards to send text messages without registering as telemarketers.

However, consumers felt an equal impact because their daily text message communication got restricted to only 100 text messages. After TRAI imposed new regulations on telemarketers on September 27, service providers such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular stopped offering message packs that, for instance, allowed consumers to send 21,000 text messages a month for Rs 88. In some cases, service providers offered message packs of only 3,000 text messages a month or 100 text messages a day, in accordance with TRAI norms.

The regulator said that it had received representations from consumers and service providers to relax the limits. "The authority has received representations from some of the service providers and consumers to increase the limit of 100 SMS per day per SIM. The authority has considered these representations and decided to increase the limit of one hundred SMS per day per SIM to two hundred SMS per day per SIM," TRAI said in a statement. Service providers are likely to begin offering the improved message packs at the earliest as they would like to pass on the benefit of these changes to more than 850 million mobile phone subscribers across the country.

"All operators will begin giving larger SMS packs," a senior executive from a mobile services provider said. Bharti Airtel, the largest telecom company by subscribers and market share, said, "TRAI's extension of the per day SMS limit per SIM to 200 is in response to the needs of customers who are frequent users of SMS services and were in favour of relaxation of this restriction. Bharti Airtel will continue to comply with SMS regulations as per government policy."