KOCHI : Ann looked at her phone longingly. She had exhausted the 100 SMS per day limit set by her service provider and couldn’t complete her fight with her boyfriend. All this and it was only 10 am! Damn!Ann is not alone. This has been the situation in all college campuses since the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) implemented a regulation on Tuesday stating that each user was allowed to send only 100 messages per sim per day. “Tintumon is dead,” declared Meera R, a final year civil engineering student. “And so are Sardarji and Rajappan. These characters were made famous thanks to the free message offers. These forwards are not just a means of killing time, they are stress busters as well. In a tension filled world, they made you laugh. Now, they will be a thing of the past! Oh god! I have no clue how we are going to cope with this!” she exclaimed.Others have more serious problems, like literature student Savithri Suresh who has lost her only means of escape from boring lectures. “Now we have to go back to the good old method of passing chits to comment during lectures. But that would mean no more privacy. I wouldn’t want the entire class to know what I tell my friend at the other end of class,” she sighed.A majority of college students view SMS or texting as their way of keeping in touch with friends. “With most of the service providers having increased their call rates by about 20 per cent, we had relied on texting to keep us in touch with our friends. What other means of communication is as easily accessible and user-friendly as texting? If I am busy, I can always check my message inbox later. A voice call is harder to ignore and an e-mail is harder to access,” noted Vidya Venugopal, a mass communication student.Some have already found a way out. “It is actually pretty simple. I just have to get another SIM card and Voila! I can send 200 messages!” quipped Malaikha Khan, who is studying forensic science. On the other hand, Sajna K, an anthropology student, said that she could use the online messaging facilities to chat with her friends. But there are a few who say that the regulation is good (Yes! Even college students!). “Now I won’t have to hurriedly pick up my phone to check a message while studying, only to find out that it is a commercial. It is just so irritating!” exclaimed Sharath S, an electronics and communication engineering student. Vandana Rajan, a post graduate student, noted that the new regulation would mean less spending and better health. “Most of my friends are what I would call textomaniacs. They just can’t stop texting. Just think about the amount of strain on their thumbs, necks and pockets! Good that TRAI thought about it at least now,” she said.
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