Context:
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has come up with fresh regulations aimed to tightrope walk between curbing spam calls and messages. These regulations to the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, come with strict timelines for compliance imposed along with enhanced penalties and consumer facilitation measures.
Important Provisions of The New Rules
More Stringent Complaint Handling and Faster Remedial Action
- Telcos must now accept spam complaints up to 7 days after a user receives unsolicited calls or messages.
- Action should be taken against unregistered telemarketers under five days.
- Reported spam will have lower tolerance levels making repeat offences very costly.
Specific Identification of Commercial messages
- Businesses sending legitimate messages should specify message type it has, in suffixes of the SMS sender head:
- ” P” for Promotional messages
- ” S” for Service messages
- ” T” for Transactional messages
- ” G” for Government messages
Harsh penalties on Repeats
- First Violation
- Outgoing service for all telecom resources of the sender shall be barred for 15 days.
- Subsequent Violations
- Complete disconnection for one year across all telecom networks.
- Blacklisting of the sender across telecom providers.
- Financial Penalties on Telcos for Misreporting Spam
- Misreporting of spam by telecom operators gives them penalties ranging from ₹2 lakh to ₹10 lakh.
AI Enabled Spam Detection & Monitoring
- Call and SMS patterns will be analyzed using AI to detect spam based on:
- High call volumes
- Short call durations
- Low incoming to outgoing call ratios
- The Do Not Disturb (DND) app has been updated to make spam reporting easier for consumers.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is a regulatory body set up by the Government of India under section 3 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997. It is the regulator of the telecommunications sector in India. It consists of a chairperson and not more than two full-time members and not more than two part-time members. The TRAI Act was amended by an ordinance, effective from 24 January 2000, establishing a Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal to take over the adjudicatory and disputes functions from TRAI.
- Chairperson
- Anil Kumar Lahoti
