The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : SMS oddity puzzles users, service providers alike

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Monday, Aug 25, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

SMS oddity puzzles users, service providers alike

M. Dinesh Varma

Sent time displayed at variance with actual time of sending

CHENNAI: Text message servers transacting millions of words exchanged by users of various mobile service providers every day seem to operate on a biological clock of their own.

While a robust mobile infrastructure by and large ensures that messages are delivered within minutes of their despatch, the sent time displayed on incoming messages is at variance with the actual time of sending by several hours.

Though the problem was initially reported to be confined to CellOne-Vodafone SMS traffic, it now appears that the oddity involves virtually all major operators.

So if you get a banal “How r u?” message from a friend or relative in the neighbourhood during the daytime, with the message sent time display showing 3 a.m., you need not panic about the sender’s state of mind.

The out-of-sync time display on the received messages has perplexed users and service providers alike. The reasons trotted out include a glitch in the message centre time settings and a disharmonious time configuration in imported handsets.

Though the SMS glitch appears inconsequential on the surface, a BSNL Chennai Telephones official admitted that the inconsistency in time display could have a more serious import for cyber investigators dealing with offensive text messages.

BSNL officials who ran test checks after complaints about the non-synchronous time display reported that the erroneous time display also involved text messages between CellOne and Airtel users. They could not volunteer a ready explanation for the phenomenon though.

Vodafone officials who, too, ran test checks said the problem seemed restricted to the handsets rather than the message centre of service providers. A technical support official suggested that users facing this problem reconfigure their GMT setting to IST, adding five-and-a-half hours or choosing the auto time zone feature.

Consumer activist T. Sadagopan said his complaint about the wrong time display of incoming messages was pending satisfactory response at CellOne’s call centre for more than a week now.

Madhavan, a C&F agent, also reports wrong sent timings on his incoming messages.

The CellOne user has also been experiencing a more serious fallout of SMS hiccups: quite a few times, consignments despatched to him by flight from Delhi had reached Chennai ahead of the SMS from the consignee about the flight details and invoice particulars.

A BSNL Chennai Telephones official said the message time-sent time mismatch could probably be rooted in the time cycle embedded in imported mobile instruments.

However, the problem is unlikely to be instrument sensitive, as the time display on some messages on the same handset do show the actual time of despatch, it is pointed out.

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