TRAI issued a session paper proposing sure amendments to its anti-spam rules. File
| Photograph Credit score: The Hindu
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) issued a session paper proposing sure amendments to its anti-spam regulations, even because the regulator struggles to maintain up with a renewed flood of fraudulent and spam calls and SMS messages proliferating in India.
The proposed amendments to the Telecom Industrial Communications Buyer Desire Laws, 2018 embody a compulsory tariff for telephone calls positioned and textual content messages despatched from ten-digit cell numbers past a sure amount on daily basis.
TRAI sought “stronger monetary disincentives for violation of regulatory provisions, and revised rules for senders and telemarketers,” the regulator stated in a press launch.
The session follows a sequence of steps the regulator and totally different authorities our bodies have taken as spam calls rise. On Tuesday (August 27), a joint committee of regulators, chaired by TRAI with representatives from the Reserve Financial institution of India, the Insurance coverage Regulatory and Improvement Authority, the Ministry of Client Affairs, the Division of Telecommunications (DoT), and different authorities our bodies, met to debate the menace of spam and fraud communications.
Additionally Learn: TRAI tells telcos to crack down on SMS spammers
The scams are rising in sophistication — simply final week, as an illustration, TRAI put out a clarification that “lot of pre-recorded calls are being made to the residents claiming to be from TRAI,” with the regulator warning that it “doesn’t provoke communication with clients relating to cell quantity disconnection via messages or in any other case.”
TRAI’s strikes, which have sometimes been far-reaching up to now as nicely, went additional this month. The regulator “prohibited [telecom providers] from transmitting messages containing URLs, APKs [installation files for Android apps], OTT hyperlinks, or name again numbers which aren’t whitelisted by the Senders.” The prevailing 2018 rules already require bulk SMS senders to register templates with a blockchain ledger, and for telcos to forestall supply of any bulk SMS messages that don’t conform with a registered template.
Misuse of so-called headers, that are alphabetic sender IDs for SMS messages despatched by companies, have additionally come to TRAI’s consideration, and the regulator has now mandated that such misuse ought to be rapidly reported and addressed by telemarketers. These rules observe over a dozen conferences held between TRAI and telcos since April, and 9 conferences final yr.
The DoT has additionally been soliciting stories from the general public on fraudulent calls and messages via its Chakshu portal, leading to over 28,000 cell handsets being blocked from accessing telecom networks, and over 20 lakh telephone numbers being required to re-verify their SIM registration.
