The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has prepared its biggest action so far against advertisements related to unwanted spam calls, fake loan-credit card offers and cyber frauds which are harassing crores of mobile users day and night across the country. TRAI has significantly tightened the rules by issuing ‘Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Third Amendment) Regulations’.
Till now, telecom companies used to wait for the number of complaints to take action, taking advantage of which telemarketers and fraudsters kept changing SIM cards indiscriminately. Under the new rules, TRAI has made Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based monitoring system mandatory and has reduced the threshold for filing complaints.
TRAI has completely changed the old structure of complaint based action:
-
Old system: Earlier, to initiate action on a suspicious number, complaints from at least 5 different consumers were required to be registered within 10 days.
-
New rule: Now if against any Caller Line Identity (CLI/Mobile Number) within 10 days 3 or more unique complaints is found and also the AI/ML system of the telecom company flags that number as a spam pattern, the operator will have to immediately initiate punitive investigation and action.
-
Graded Action: If 5 or more numbers associated with a sender are flagged within 10 days, there is a provision for immediate Re-KYC of all its numbers, physical verification, ban on outgoing calls and for repeated violations, there is a provision for disconnection and blacklisting forever.
TRAI has implemented a strict framework regarding robocalls made through computer software, auto-dialers and AI-generated voices:
-
Pre-declaration mandatory: Any bank, real estate company or agency which will use Application-to-Person (A2P) i.e. automated calling system will have to declare all those numbers in advance with the telecom operator. All such calls made without announcement will be treated as outright illegal spam (UCC).
-
Termination Charge: TRAI has also imposed a termination charge of up to 5 paise per minute on such unwanted automated calls, so that companies avoid indiscriminate calling.
-
Abuse of headers and templates: If information about misuse of SMS header or template of a registered company is received, the telecom company will have to suspend that header within 6 hours of receiving the information. The guilty telemarketer will be blacklisted on all telecom networks for 1 year.
Often people simply check out the price or information about a product on an e-commerce website or service platform, and then get flooded with promotional calls and messages on their phones for months afterward. TRAI has made a new ‘7-day rule’ prohibiting this:
-
From the date the consumer makes a written or digital inquiry about a good or service. up to 7 days Only the company can contact him.
-
After 7 days have passed, sending any marketing or promotional message without the consumer’s fresh consent will be considered a direct violation of the rules.
The new amendments significantly strengthen the rights of common mobile consumers:
-
If a consumer has lodged a complaint of spam calls on 1909 or through ‘TRAI DND App’ and he is not satisfied with the resolution of the telecom company or the complaint is rejected, he can file an appeal before the Appellate Authority within 15 days.
-
This appeal can be lodged through DND app, operator’s web portal or directly by calling/SMS 1909.
TRAI has also clarified that any third-party caller ID app (like Truecaller etc.) does not provide access to regulated service number series authorized by the government like 1600xx, 1601xx (Bank and urgent transactional calls) or 140xx (Promotional calls) cannot be blocked or tagged as blanket block spam. However, the consumer will be completely free to individually block any number in his personal phone.
It is clear from these new guidelines of TRAI that all the escape routes are being closed for spammers, unauthorized telemarketers and cyber fraudsters in the digital telecom space.