Daily we all receive SMS from various sources, some being known sources and many from unknown, advertising for their products, downloads or some offers blah blah blah.
Many times we receive sms which comes along with a message and a sender name/id read as TA-160by2, MD-BIGBLAST, AZ-LOANWALA, LM-SECRET etc. Ever thought what the two letters TA, MD, AZ, LM etc in sender id stands for????
So here goes the actual story behind it.
Every SMS has got a sender id with it which let us know from whom we have received the message. In personal sms forwarded from mobile, the mobile number goes as the sender-id. And if the senders mobile number is stored with us, it is displayed as the contact name. But there are cases where sms is used for commercial purpose where advertisers/senders would select a blind data and send them bulk sms promoting their service or product. In such cases advertiser wishes to have his own company name to be listed as sender in recipients mobile. For this he needs to buy sender id from service providers.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) who is the whole & sole controller of the Indian Telecom Industry has restricted this sender-id to be of 11 characters where 8 characters would be the advertiser/sender name and other 3 characters is used as identification tag describing the sender's service provider and sms generated area code. So the actual formula goes like
SENDER-ID = < sender-operator-code > < sender-area-code > - < sender-name >
Below is the table which has details about the operator codes and area codes.
