Context:
In a significant move to combat spam, fraud, and misuse of telecom infrastructure, India’s telecom regulator TRAI convened a high-level multi-regulator meeting on July 22, 2025. The meeting included top officials from RBI, SEBI, DoT, MHA, and MEITY, culminating in the launch of a pilot project on digital consent acquisition.
Key Highlights
Cross-Sectoral Regulatory Collaboration
- Hosted by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
- Objective: Build coordinated strategies to protect consumers in a digital-first economy.
Launch of Digital Consent Acquisition Pilot
- Aims to replace unverifiable offline consent with a tamper-proof digital system for calls and SMS.
- Features of the mechanism:
- Digital registration, review, and revocation of user consents.
- A unified interface accessible to all telecom users.
- Four dedicated working groups to oversee:
- Technical
- Operational
- Legal
- Consumer awareness aspects
Transition to 1600-Series for Commercial Calls
- The committee agreed on the phased implementation of the 1600-series for Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) commercial calls.
- Purpose: Differentiate legitimate commercial calls from spam and fraud.
- Implementation pace to depend on scale of operations of respective institutions.
Enhanced Cybersecurity and Data Exchange
- Discussion on a new enforcement tool for real-time sharing of cyber fraud and spam data.
- Data exchange to occur between:
- Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) of MHA
- Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) of DoT
- Objective: Automated, secure, and timely detection of cyber threats.
