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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.