Indranil, Thank you for the information.
Take care, Christopher Davis, MLS Systems & E-Services Librarian Uintah County Library cgda...@uintah.utah.gov (435) 789-0091 ext.261 uintahlibrary.org basinlibraries.org facebook.com/uintahcountylibrary On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 11:19 PM, Indranil Das Gupta <indr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > Need a spot of help from you good peeps at Bywater :) > > This post[1] from Kyle w.r.t bug 9021 is causing a whole bunch of > confusion among the Indian users of Koha. SMS support is an obvious > much sought after feature and Kyle's fix seems like a wonderful thing, > except that for India it simply does not work and thus needs a > exception disclaimer added to it. > > I request that the post be updated with a note like this : "This > feature may not work at all in India due to Indian telecom rules. > Users in India are strongly advised to explore their legal exposure in > using this feature with a lawyer in India" > > @Nicole - when you expand the manual, this exception needs to be mentioned. > > Let me explain why. Warning long read. :) > > Due to the nature of legal and telecom regulatory framework in India, > bug 9021 will for 99% of 500+ million cell phones in India. Briefly, > we have a policy of "sender pays" - receiving texts is free, sending > is not. That is the first blocker for the email to sms scheme. The > facility is offered only on high cost business application packages > where there is a reverse charge mechanism of making the recipient pay > the data charge. > > Further TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has clamped user > to user (not system to user) smses at max of 200 per day, which makes > it unsuitable for a busy circulation system. Further India has > national number portability (NNP) - i.e. a cell phone user can shift > from telco to telco, without a change of numbers. So these days it is > often impossible to tell from number if say it is from Vodafone or > Idea Cellular or Airtel (as user may have shifted between them, but > kept the old number under NNP facility. This impacts the > +91<10-digit-number>@telco.tld scheme of the patch. > > Further, under TRAI rules, promotional texts can be sent to only to > cell phone users who are not listed in the national do-not-disturb > (DND) list and only between 9 AM -- 9PM IST. Sending to non-DND and > outside the time window is a fairly serious prosecutable criminal > offence. > > System alerts and notification texts that need to be sent any time > 24/7 have to be sent using what is called the "transactional route" by > TRAI. Users (say a library) who want to send out these alerts have to > do the following before they can send out a text: > > (a) sign up with a transactional bulk message service provider > > (b) register their sms templates with TRAI for approval > > (c) get their users (the text recipients) to opt-in > > Legally in India if you wanted to send e.g. an overdue alert to your > user without clearing a,b and c above you can be open yourself up to > criminal prosecution and as well as see action as perpetrator of a > civil wrong. FWIW, SMSes sent user to user typically costs between 10 > - 30 times more than a transactional bulk sms text (system to user). > > BTW, the list that Nicole found lists a whole bunch of Indian service > providers. Let me clarify that this is dated document and none of > those Indian references work. They got their because about 8 - 10 > years back that sort of feature used to work in India as well. But as > the number of spam texts ballooned this access was withdrawn. > > > > [1] http://bywatersolutions.com/2016/02/26/koha-sms/ > > cheers > > -- > Indranil Das Gupta > > Phone : +91-98300-20971 > Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog > IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net > Twitter : indradg > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other > format is acceptable. Support Open Standards. > > For a free editor supporting ODF, please visit LibreOffice - > http://www.documentfoundation.org > _______________________________________________ > Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org > Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz > https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha