‍‍Why Outage In OTP Services Continues In Banking, E-commerce And Aadhaar Sectors?

‍The sudden disruption of OTP services hampered the banking, E-commerce and Aadhar services, many suffered from transactions, payments, biometric and payment processes.

Lakhs of mobile phone users continue to face disruption in receiving one-time-passwords (OTP) after Telecom companies on Monday, 8 March initiated the implementation of Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), impacting a host of OTP services including banking, E-commerce, and Aadhaar.

According to the latest guidelines released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), every SMS has to be verified before it is delivered – a process known as ‘scrubbing’.

In order to implement ‘content scrubbing’, a Hyderabad-based software company, Tanla, in partnership with telecom operators has been checking the header and content of every commercial SMS, and any unregistered SMS is simply being blocked.

This process impacted the OTP services on 8 March and stands unresolved as of Tuesday.

A banking source on condition of anonymity told #KhabarLive, “ We started receiving several calls from customers since morning about OTPs not being received on their devices. Many people could not transfer funds, and login to their netbanking accounts”.

Where’s The Problem?
As per the latest TRAI guidelines, every text or message by a business has to be approved by DLT companies. Accordingly, entrepreneurs and businesses have to register their content templates.

Telemarketers have alleged that even a small change in content like a full stop is dropping the OTP messages.

“Exactly what we feared is happening today…it’s a crazy situation so far. Even normal promotional messages are getting dropped by small changes in content like a full stop. TRAI must intervene and address the situation at the earliest because if they won’t, ultimately RBI will,” a head of A2P SMS business told a vernacular business daily.

Is this Tanla’s Fault?
Tanla Solutions, the implementing partner of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for telecom companies, has clarified that there are no problems with its servers but the problem lies with the businesses who have not fully complied with the prescribed content template.

Uday Reddy, Chairman & CEO, Tanla Platforms Limited, told #KhabarLive, “The concern over non-delivery of OTPs is arising due to multiple issues across enterprises and telemarketers from the time TRAI enforced the header registration on 8th March, 2021. Firstly, not all enterprises and telemarketers have registered the header and content of commercial SMSes. There have also been issues with registered templates too, as they did not fully comply with the prescribed format. Our platform is operating at full efficiency and there are no issues at Tanla’s end. In fact, we are working closely with enterprises and telemarketers to comply with the regulation.”

Reddy further clarified that Tanla’s implementation of the blockchain-based Trubloq platform is in compliance with the TCCPR regulations issued by the telecom regulator TRAI.

“Since Trubloq’s commercial launch on 1 September 2020, Tanla has onboarded more than 34,000 enterprises and the DLT platform currently processes around 70% of A2P traffic in India, topping more than 1 billion interactions in a single day recently,” he added.

What About Cellular Operators?
Meanwhile, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), an association firm representing Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Reliance Jio said that Telecom Service Providers has requested all the principal entities to get their content template registered with the Telecom Service Providers at the earliest.

“TSPs are following TRAI Regulations & have activated due process of Content scrubbing to address the issue of unsolicited commercial communication,” said Lt Gen Dr SP Kochhar, DG COAI.

“TSPs has sent various communications to the principle entities to register their Content Template with the TSPs before 7 March 2021.We request all the PEs to get their content template registered with TSPs at the earliest, and help TSPs to address the issue of unsolicited commercial communication,” he added. #KhabarLive #hydnews