Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has sent a notification to mobile service providers to stop all promotional calls from unregistered telemarketing agencies or callers and blacklist them.
Several Indians have lost significant amount of money in the wake of spam and phishing calls. India has 1.168 billion mobile phone users at the end of May 2024. Indian telecom operators such as Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and BSNL have generated money by not blocking calls from unregistered telemarketing agencies.
SMS business contributes revenue of INR 0.19 per subscriber per month for Indian telecom operators, according to TRAI data. Revenue from voice calls is INR 14.97 per subscriber per month. TRAI has shared outgoing SMS for subscribers. The average number of outgoing SMS per subscriber per month is 12. There is no study on how much spam calls and spam SMS contributed to revenue of telecom operators.
A recent report in Times of India said more than 60 percent of Indian mobile phone users have received three or more spam calls on an average every day during the last 12 months. Several smartphone users are trying to avoid spam calls or blocking spam calls by installing Truecaller app.
Some of the customers say the direction from TRAI will not work unless the telecom regulator decided to impose penalty on telecom operators and telemarketing agencies in India.
TelecomLead.com recommends that TRAI should follow the footsteps of US telecom regulator FCC (Federal Communication Commission) for stopping illegal telemarketing campaigns.
FCC has recently proposed a $2 million fine against Lingo Telecom, the carrier responsible for failing to properly authenticate caller ID information associated with thousands of illegal deepfake generative AI robocalls.
FCC has imposed penalty of $225 million on Texas-based telemarketers for transmitting approximately 1 billion robocalls, many of them illegally spoofed, to sell short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans.
TRAI says
all promotional voice calls from the unregistered Senders/ Unregistered Telemarketer (UTMs) using Telecom Resources (SIP/ PRI/ other telecom resources) shall be stopped immediately.
If there are any consumer complaints against unregistered sender/ telemarketer for making commercial voice calls in violation of the regulations, telecom operators should disconnect all the telecom resources to the sender for up to two years.
All the unregistered senders / telemarketers using SIP! PRI/ other telecom resources to make voice calls to the citizen shall be migrated to the DLT platform within one month of the issue of this direction and submit compliance report within seven days thereafter.
India government has been looking to reduce the number of marketing calls and SMS to mobile phone users across the country. Some of the scammers pose as representatives of firms like FedEx and Blue Dart and extract sensitive financial information by sending phishing links in the pretext of retrieving lost packages.
“All promotional voice calls from the unregistered senders/unregistered telemarketer using Telecom Resources shall be stopped immediately,” the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a statement.
Baburajan Kizhakedath
