When falling Sensex becomes a butt of joke

Everything about the financial crisis need not be depressing. People are finding humour in the middle of the stocks meltdown, although punters who have burnt their fingers and much more would find it rude.

Mobile phones are abuzz with funny SMSs doing the rounds about the financial storm and the stocks crash.

Consider this SMS that goes: “Markets are set to regain 20,000 mark... (But only if) Sensex, Nikkei and Hang Seng are put together at 5,000 points each, NYSE Composite at 1,000 points, Dow Jones Industrial Average at 3,500 and Nasdaq at 500 points.” In the real world, Sensex is still above 10,000-point mark, but has nearly halved from its record high level seen early this year, DJIA has dipped to near 8,450, Nikkei is trading near its 20-year low at over 8,000 points.

There are also jokes online like “Black Mondays used to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Now they are coming along more regularly than Delhi Metro trains.” Another SMS doing the rounds says: “Respected Sensex Sir passed away on October 10, 2008 after not keeping well for nine months.

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Trai asks telcos to bring down SMS charges

In a move that could halve SMS charges, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked mobile operators to slash tariffs voluntarily. Unlike the voice traffic, the cost component in SMS is negligible–around 2 paise. Still, SMS tariffs are either higher than voice rates or at best comparable.

Sources say Trai has held two rounds of negotiations with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the apex of body of GSM mobile operators, convincing them to voluntarily bring down the tariffs, failing which it would intervene through regulation. In fact, two years back also Trai had urged the operators to bring down SMS rates.

The average tariff for local calls is Re 1, the same as the local SMS rate, while for STD calls, the average tariff is Rs 1.50 and the SMS rate is higher at Rs 2.

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Web Sent SMSs now face Restrictions

Sending free SMSs via websites won't be easy anymore.

Concerned at the misuse of the service, by sending messages using other people's numbers, a DoT-industry committee has now decided that only websites authenticated by the mobile operators can be used for sending such messages.

The operators have given an undertaking to the department of telecommunications (DoT) that they would comply with the new directions.

Till now, websites didn't need an authentication from service providers for the SMS service. DoT and the service providers have been receiving complaints about the misuse of the service wherein users would send messages by using someone else's mobile number, which is a security threat.

The move would also dampen the spirits of websites that send SMSs to consumers for promotional purposes. These websites now need to be authenticated by the operators.

The committee has also decided that the service providers must also ensure that the SMSs received by their network from a website would not have India's country code +91 as the sender party's address. The code +91 is strictly reserved for messages sent from a mo bile phone. However, the service providers' responsibility would not extend to the content of the messages, which would solely lie with the content providers.

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