Indian mobile phone users can send up to 20 SMSes a day and 25 kilobytes of data from Thursday, according to a notification by the Ministry of Communications.

On August 17th, the government had put a ban on bulk SMSes and MMSes after some anti-social elements used these services to spread hate material that created a fear psychosis among northeastern people and led to their mass exodus from different parts of the country. The Home Ministry had asked the Department of Telecommunications to implement the order via telecom operators.

Meanwhile, the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has urged the government to lift the ban on bulk SMSes, saying the ban was hitting the business of telemarketers and telecom companies very hard.

Estimates suggest that the 15-day ban on bulk SMSes will see telemarketers losing around 30 per cent in monthly revenues. Bulk SMS services provider Netcore, which counts ICICI Bank, Reliance Retail and Tata as its customers, said that it would lose nearly Rs 75 lakh due to the ban.

Speaking on the topic, Netcore CEO Kalpit Jain said, “We are yet to determine the overall impact of it in the coming few days, but overall, I think we have seen an overall drop of 40-50% on the total basis."

Meanwhile, the Cellular Operators Association of India said that telecom companies stood to lose 7-8 per cent of their monthly revenues.