India’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) decided to scrap the 200 SMS per SIM limit on messages generated or sent to automated machines in the country.

TRAI said in a statement that, “The TRAI has received representations from the stakeholders that in view of the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM, they are not able to send machine-to-machine and person-to-machine SMS which are sent by them to initiate process or application for their operational requirements.”

The statement also said that the regulator considered such representations and has decided to exclude machine-to-machine and person-to-machine messages from the limit of 200 messages per day.

These services include ‘providing details of driver or taxi on booking of radio taxi, tentative date of delivery of goods, tentative date of attending complaint, contact details of person attending the complaint etc’, according to the regulator.

The regulator has already classified information sent from registered firms to its employees or to customers informing them about the delivery of their products and services, under the transactional message category and be exempt from the limit.

The authorities had imposed a cap of 100SMS/day to control unsolicited calls and messages by telemarketers. It later decided to increase the limit to 200SMS/day bringing some relief to the service providers. The latest move will further free service providers in the country.