Trai chairman Vaghela to meet telcos on March 27 to discuss ways to stop pesky commercial calls

Kolkata: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman PD Vaghela will hold a meeting with all telecom companies on March 27 to discuss ways to counter the continuing menace of unsolicited commercial communications (UCC), or unwanted text messages and calls.

Trai’s meeting will explore a multi-pronged approach to address the problem through technical solutions, regulations, directions and close monitoring.

In late-February, Vaghela had chaired a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCOR) to implement UCC detect solutions to counter the menace. The JCOR consists of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities & Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) and the ministry of consumer affairs (MoCA). The JCOR has been mandated to frame a joint action plan to curb financial fraud using telecom resources.

“Exploitation of the digital ledger technology (DLT) platform to bring all access providers together on it with respect to UCC detect solutions will be a positive step in this direction,” Trai said in a media statement Wednesday.

Back in July 2018, the telecom regulator had issued rules, making it mandatory for telcos to seek customer consent for receiving UCC from telemarketers. It had also then called for deployment of blockchain — or DLT that is used to manage crypto-currencies — to ensure telemarketing messages were sent only to subscribers from authorised entities.

Trai’s upcoming meeting with telcos will discuss formulation of a framework for sharing of UCC data detected by access providers on the DLT platform and strict action on principal entities (PEs) and registered tele-marketers (RTMs) for non-compliance. It will also discuss ways to use AI/ML based anti-phishing systems, implementation of RegTech solutions on the DLT platform for promotional voice calls, implementation of digital consent acquisition & updates of the 'regulatory sandbox' established to detect unwanted text messages and calls.

Trai’s efforts to curb pesky commercial calls have so far largely been in vain as mobile users continue to get bombarded by the menace. A recent national survey by LocalCircles found that a whopping 66% of mobile users continue to get three or even more pesky calls every day and most originate from personal mobile numbers. The survey had also noted that 78% of these calls relate to selling financial services and real estate. What’s more, 92% of mobile users surveyed had complained of being plagued by pesky calls night and day even after registering their numbers on the Do Not Disturb (DND) list.