You have been receiving SMS codes: TA-ICICI, AX-Airtel…and wondering what’s it?

Recently, 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.