NETWORK CONGESTION Confusion over govt SMS order

Mumbai: Even on the fourth day of the government directive not to allow cell phone consumers to send more than five SMSs a day, confusion and congestion in the cellular mobile networks prevailed in the city.      While some subscribers could send 100 SMSs a day, others with the same operator could not send more than five. Apparently, some leading telecom operators in the city said they were implementing the directive only for pre-paid consumers as they were unable to do so for post-paid due to technical reasons.      A senior telecom department official said four leading telecom operators inform DoT about their technical non-feasibility in implementing the directive for post-paid consumers. "Other smaller companies are implementing it for both," they added.      Apparently many postpaid consumers were confused as some could send more than five SMSs a day, while some could not even send a single SMS. "It's sheer discrimination as the company should not charge me rental as per my plan for these 15 days," said Ankit Raje, a resident of Colaba.      "Besides confusion and congestion, it's a ludicrous rule to control rumour-mongers. There are various free SMS websites from which rumours can be circulated. And the government assumes that within 15 days everything will be normal. What if it does not even after 15 days? Will they initiate this limit for the rest of our lives? This is a clear case of shooting the messenger when they should be looking into the actual cause of the unrest," said a consumer, Manohar Nair, according to whom rentals charged for more SMSs should be deducted from bills by the companies.      Hundreds of cell phone consumers across the city, which has one of the highest tele-densities in the country, are reporting heavy congestion in the network for three days. This is mainly due to a spurt in the number of calls in the absence of the facility to send more than five SMSs or MMSs a day keeping networks busy and subsequently putting several calls on hold or waiting.      The confusion that prevailed among call categories of consumers showed that implementation of the directive was not uniform across categories.