What’s AT-HDFC, AX-Airtel, TA-IITians…?

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.