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.
