Following an expose by TOI on November 5 that SMS tariffs are 50 to 100 times higher than what it costs service providers, a top Trai official said, ``We are going to issue a consultation paper to review telecom tariffs within 20 days to a month.''

Consumers can expect substantial relief in SMS tariffs latest by March. The official said the move would have come sooner had the regulator not had its hands full with a consultation process on 2G spectrum.

The now inevitable tumbling of SMS rates has important implications for data usage. At present, SMS forms less than 5% of total revenue for mobile operators.

The widespread proliferation of texting is expected to spin off into far higher levels of internet usage. Experts confirm that a crash in SMS tariffs could be the first step to generating demand-side pressure for wireless broadband access.

The cost of an SMS is a fraction of a paisa. This is because an average SMS consists of 1KB data, which takes a fraction of a second for transportation and termination. This revelation by TOI knocked the bottom out of claims that India has among the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.

Trai has so far refused to regulate rates under the belief that competitive markets were at work and tariffs reflect costs. However, in the SMS arena, competition has clearly failed to move prices closer to costs. The practice of pricing SMSs high has been prevalent for several years while Trai has chosen to look the other way. This, despite the facts stating otherwise in Trai's own cost data from its IUC regulation of August 2006.