TRAI to release consultation paper on telemarketing regulations: Chairman Lahoti

New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is expected to finalise by January updated and tighter regulations on curbing spam calls and messages after holding extensive discussions on its recent consultation paper, Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti has said.

Lahoti further said that based on a recent reference from the Telecom Department, TRAI will prepare and float a consultation paper on the regulatory framework for telemarketers.

The TRAI Chief said a series of measures taken over the past months by the regulator to combat spam calls and malicious/fraudulent messages is leading to "significant and perceptible clean up of the system," but noted that "more needs to be done."

"Our consultation paper was floated in August-end...we have already received comments and counter-comments on it and now we will be analysing all the views and holding open house discussions. It will take about three months for regulations to be finalised... so around January, we will come out with updated regulations on curbing spam," Lahoti said.

TRAI had, in August, issued a consultation paper on 'Review of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018' where the regulator amongst other issues sought stakeholder opinion on whether a higher tariff should be introduced for calls and SMS-es beyond a certain limit in a graded manner.

The regulator in the consultation paper mooted that telecom subscribers making over 50 calls or sending out even 50 SMS-es a day, along with certain other markers, should be scrutinised as a potential pesky callers.

"To discourage usage of P2P (person-to-person) SMS-es and voice calls by UTMs (unregistered telemarketers), and strengthen the regulatory framework as enunciated in the TCCCPR-2018, a need has been felt to specify a tariff for SMS and voice calls per SIM per day beyond a certain limit by persons other than an entity registered under the provisions of TCCCPR-2018," the consultation paper said.

At present, mobile operators provide several plans with unlimited calls.

The regulator felt that differential tariffs may make commercial communication using 10-digit numbers unviable for unregistered telemarketers. TRAI had, in fact, noted that despite punitive actions, the unsolicited calls from 10-digit mobile numbers have continued to irritate and harass customers.

TRAI has announced a slew of measures and directives to crack down on spam and fraudulent calls and messages, over the past months.

The telecom regulator issued a directive on August 13, 2024, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of regulations would face strict consequences, including disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period.

TRAI in a release issued on Monday, said over 800 entities/individuals have been blacklisted, and more than 18 lakh SIP DID/Mobile Numbers/Telecom resources have been disconnected, marking a significant step towards cleansing the systems of commercial calls.

Further, in line with TRAI directions of August 20, 2024, access providers have implemented mandatory whitelisting of URLs, APKs, or OTT links in messages with effect from October 1, 2024. This aims to ensure that only safe and approved links can get through the SMS, so consumers are shielded from harmful or fake websites, apps, or other online threats.

With effect from October 1, 2024, telemarketing calls starting with the 140xx numbering series have been migrated to the Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) platform for strict monitoring and control.

As per TRAI, access providers have implemented technical solutions to ensure the traceability of entities (senders/principal entities) involved in sending a message to recipients.

"This new system ensures that each person who handles the message, from the sender to the final delivery, is tracked," TRAI said in a release on Monday, adding that this involves defining Principal Entity (PE)-Telemarketers (TMs) chain through which messages travel before reaching the access provider.

To provide a transition time for awareness, technical upgrades, and chain declaration, TRAI as per its directive of October 28, 2024 has asked access providers to ensure PE-TM chain declaration by all PEs (principal entities) and telemarketers at the earliest, and the PEs and TMs who default on PE-TM chain binding to be issued a warning by respective access providers on daily basis until November 30, 2024.

"With effect from December 1, 2024, any traffic (messages) where the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match the predefined chain shall be rejected," the TRAI release added.