Paying for Atal's SMS irks some

JAIPUR: Many cellphone users, with roaming facilities, are angry with mobile service providers for sending them Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee''s message - both recorded and SMS, urging the electorate to vote for the BJP.
"Large number of roaming facility users who received such calls carrying a recorded message of the Prime Minister had to shell out money for it.We have received several such complaints from the users, but we, as mobile service providers, were bound to pass such messages which were through auto diallers to the called number. At times, roaming facility users abroad received such calls at odd hours to the great annoyance of the users who were not only disturbed in their sleep, but had to pay for receiving the call," said Sunil Mittal, chairman and managing director of Bharti Tele Venture, a service provider.
The BJP, as part of its election campaign, used both mobiles and fixed lines to send across Vajpayee''s recorded message.
The whole exercise cost the party a fortune as millions of such calls were made across the country. In several cases, calls were received by mobile and landline users even on the day of the poll.
Mittal said several telecom providers were engaged for sending the message across the country to the users. Some times, the calling numbers were displayed on the screen and sometimes it was not displayed on the screen.
"We were duty-bound to pass on the calls routed thro-ugh us and we were totally helpless if our customers felt offended. According to Indian laws, no call can be stopped by any service provider and as per TRAI stipulation all such calls had to be charged to the customers if on roaming. We could only apologise to the customers for inconvenience caused to them," said Mittal.