In December 2008, TRAI mandated the policy of sending Bulk SMS. Where they shared various key points that one should remember before sending messages as mentioned below:
1. Firstly check that your SMS sender ID in India would be a total of 9 characters.
2. It is mandatory that your Sender Id should be approved on DLT.
3. These sender ids should be in the format **-******. These nine characters should be like, first two characters to be alphabets and the third, a hyphen or dash and the last 6 characters again alphabets.
4. The first two Characters would be the first character that will be denoting the operator name i.e who is originating the SMS, the Second Character denoting the telecom circle.
5. After hyphen or dash, there should be 6 characters that can be alphabets or numeric. The users can’t use alphanumeric characters in the sender ID.
6. The sender id should be by the name of a person or business so that the user can easily identify the business name through the sender id.
7. These user ids are the combination of prefix and sender names like BP-XXXXXX.
8. Here, BP is prefix and used with the combination of the next 6 alphabets like XXXXXX. These are called sender id. Through this combination users receive messages.
In this SMS Prefix format, the first character will be the operator's name & the second character will be the circle name. Find below some important sender id prefix formats:
a) AD - Airtel Delhi
b) BP - BSNL Punjab
c) VK - Vodafone Kolkata
d) VM - Vodafone Mumbai
e) JD - Jio Delhi
f) CP - Videocon Punjab
g) AX - Airtel Karnataka
h) VZ - Vodafone Maharashtra and Goa
i) JM - Jio Mumbai
j) BT - BSNL TamilNadu incl. Chennai
k) BR - BSNL Rajasthan
l) VD - Vodafone Delhi
m) MD - MTNL Delhi
n) JG - Jio Gujarat
o) JX - Jio Karnataka
Below are some important codes of Service Providers as well as the areas.
Service Provider Codes
i) A: Bharti Airtel and Bharti Hexacom
ii) B: BSNL
iii) C: Datacom
iv) D: Aircel and Dishnet Wireless
v) E: Reliance Telecom
vi) H: HFCL
vii) I: Idea Cellular, Aditya Birla Telecom
viii) J: Jio
ix) L: Loop Telecom and BPL
x) M: MTNL
xi) P: Spice Communications
xii) R: Reliance Communications
xiii) S: S. Tel Ltd
xiv) T: Tata Teleservices, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra
xv) U: Unitech Group of Companies (Telenor)
xvi) V: Vodafone Group of Companies
xvii) W: Swan Telecom
xviii) Y: Shyam Telecom
Service Area Codes
1) A: Andhra Pradesh
2) B: Bihar
3) D: Delhi
4) E: UP (East)
5) G: Gujarat
6) H: Haryana
7) I: Himachal Pradesh
8) J: Jammu & Kashmir
9) K: Kolkata
10) L: Kerala
11) M: Mumbai
12) N: North East
13) O: Orissa
14) P: Punjab
15) R: Rajasthan
16) S: Assam
17) T: Tamil Nadu, including Chennai
18) V: West Bengal
19) W: UP (West)
20) X: Karnataka
21) Y: Madhya Pradesh
22) Z: Maharashtra
