TRAI Takes Action Against Unwanted Commercial Calls in India
New Delhi [India], August 6: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) held a meeting with Access Service Providers and Delivery Telemarketers to address the growing issue of unsolicited commercial calls. The meeting focused on the misuse of headers and content templates, which has led to a surge in unwanted messages and a loss of consumer trust.
TRAI scrutinized the steps taken by service providers and telemarketers to identify and trace the entities responsible for these messages. Emphasis was placed on the need for corrective measures to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The control and regulation of promotional calls, including robotic, auto-dialler, and pre-recorded calls, were thoroughly examined. Discussions also centered on migrating all enterprise business customers to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform for sending bulk communications in compliance with TRAI regulations.
TRAI called for proactive action from all stakeholders, especially Access Service Providers and their Delivery Telemarketers, to implement technical solutions for traceability and to prevent bulk calling by enterprise customers using 10-digit numbers through Primary Rate Interface (PRI) or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
The regulator conveyed a strong message to service providers and their telemarketers, urging them to take immediate and effective measures to curb bulk communications using voice calls. This includes implementing robust technical solutions and stricter oversight to ensure compliance with regulatory standards.
Doubts Revealed
TRAI -: TRAI stands for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. It is a government body that makes rules for telephone and internet services in India.
Access Service Providers -: Access Service Providers are companies that give us telephone and internet services, like Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone.
Delivery Telemarketers -: Delivery Telemarketers are people or companies that call you to sell products or services, like when you get a call about a new credit card.
Unsolicited commercial calls -: Unsolicited commercial calls are phone calls you get from companies trying to sell you something, even though you didn’t ask for it.
Headers -: Headers are special codes or names that show who is sending a message or making a call.
Content templates -: Content templates are pre-written messages that companies use to send the same information to many people.
Traceability -: Traceability means being able to find out where a call or message came from.
Bulk calling -: Bulk calling is when many phone calls are made at once, usually by companies to reach lots of people quickly.
10-digit numbers -: 10-digit numbers are regular phone numbers like the ones we use every day.
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) -: Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is a way to store information across many computers so that it is secure and hard to change.