I am sure most of you must have already noticed that promotional SMSs these days that we generally receive from Banks, Advertising agencies selling some products or from other financial/non financial institutions are prefixed with 2 characters in the Sender’s Name signifying something.

I am not sure if there is some legal ruling abiding which they are doing so. But its really good to have it to distinguish it with the normal sms from friends and family.

Some Examples are as below:

• AM – Barclays
• TM – ICICIBank
• TA – HSBC
• BZ – SBICard

If any of you know more about it then please let us know.

-NKJ

Update:

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced these codes in order to curb bulk SMS providers from unsolicited commercial communication. Now that these codes are implemented, the sender can be traced, if necessary, as these codes reveal the location, the name of the company and the service provider.

This is how the code should look like:

• XY = Name of the company
• X = Code of the service provider
• Y = Location

Which means, IZ-ICICIBANK would be:

I = Idea Cellular (service provider)

Z = Maharashtra (location)

Read more of it at

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/Directives/131/direction10dec08.pdf

NitiN Kumar Jain

Nitin works in an IT MNC professionally but blogs and owns NKJ Live. He is also the co-owner of a professional start-up ARGHAM BYTES

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