You have been receiving SMS codes: TA-ICICI, AX-Airtel…and wondering what’s it?
Recently, from almost a month SMSs from Banks, Service Providers, Companies have started prefixing something like ID, AT, VK…etc. What’s all this after all!!? Here I am to explain you what it is! Normally these SMSs originates from a Bulk SMS provider where you can use 11 digit Alpha-Numeric characters as "Sender". But there were some security risks in this method. I was able to give a phone number as "Sender" & it appears as that person at the recipient end. Basically there was a chance to send SMSs as a different person! I was actually using this to fool my friends.
But the new TRAI regulation insisted bulk SMS providers to restrict the "Sender ID" to 8 characters. Other three characters should be used to specify who is the service provider & where it’s originated from. Say for example: HDFCBANK sends an SMS to you using bulk SMS provider located at Tamil Nadu which uses Airtel. You will receive it as AT-HDFCBANK. First character specifies which service provider the message is being originated & the second character specifies from which location it’s originated. Here is the table which has details of these SMS codes:
Service Provider Codes:
| Service Provider | Code |
|---|---|
| Aircel, Dishnet Wireless | D |
| Bharti Airtel | A |
| BSNL | B |
| BPL Mobile/Loop Telecom | L |
| Datacom Solutions | C |
| HFCL Infotel | H |
| Idea Cellular | I |
| MTNL | M |
| Reliance Communications | R |
| Reliance Telecom | E |
| S tel | S |
| Shyam Telecom | Y |
| Spice Telecom | P |
| Swan Telecom | W |
| Tata Teleservices | T |
| Unitech Group | U |
| Vodafone Group | V |
| Service Area | Code |
| Andhra Pradesh | A |
| Assam | S |
| Bihar | B |
| Delhi | D |
| Gujarat | G |
| Haryana | H |
| Himachal Pradesh | I |
| Jammu & Kashmir | J |
| Karnataka | X |
| Kerala | L |
| Kolkata | K |
| Madhya Pradesh | Y |
| Maharashtra | Z |
| Mumbai | M |
| North East | N |
| Orissa | O |
| Punjab | P |
| Rajasthan | R |
| Tamil Nadu | T |
| UP-East | E |
| UP-West | W |
| West Bengal | V |
So, combination of these two constitutes the first two digit of ?Sender? followed by an hyphen (-) & actual sender name.
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