The government order to make it five digit codes for premium VAS services has hit the operators hard. Some of them claim that they are witnessing 50-60% drop in revenues after this decision.

This decision has effected those users who have old SIM cards.  Such users receive a denial of service message whenever they opt to use such services since their SIM cards have old codes preloaded in them.

Replacing all the old SIM cards too seems to be not feasible putting the operators in a fix.

Pankaj Jain President and COO of Webdunia, said, “We have been experiencing almost a 50% drop in number of SMS requests received for services like astrology, jokes and news. From two million a month, the SMS count has come down to one million a month.”  

Vishal Maheshwari of Yahoo said, “We were hoping that the regulator will ease up things by providing a relief as no technical solution is available. But the issue stands unresolved and it’s hurting. Industry-wide revenues have fallen at least 35-40% month on month.”

The government too is losing out on service tax on use of these services.

Operators request some more time to be granted(read 6-8 months) to replace the old SIM cards and till such period be allowed to use he old system of four digit codes.