TRAI Amends Spam Call Rules to Ease Reporting, Enforce Compliance; COAI Slams Penalties for Operators

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recently amended its regulations designed to curb unsolicited spam calls and promotional messages from unregistered telemarketers (UTMs), while increasing penalties for spammers, and operators to fail to comply with regulations. The amendment to the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018, was  implemented after a consultation process that sought stakeholders' views on changes to existing regulations. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has criticised the updated rules, including the penalty on service providers.

TRAI's New Norms Ease Spam Reporting, Reduce Compliance Time

As part of the second amendment to the TCCCPR, the TRAI has increased the complaint window from three days to seven days, and customers will be able to report spam calls and texts without having registered their preferences. Telecom operators must act on complaints within five days instead of 30 days, and take action against a sender if they receive five complaints in 10 days (instead of 10 complaints in seven days).

Telcos must also allow users to opt out of receiving all promotional messages, and the TRAI says that message headers must now include "-P","-S","-T","-G" to help customers identify promotional, service, transactional, and government messages, respectively.

Potential spammers must also be identified by operators, using SMS and call pattern analysis, as well as 'honeypots'. Access providers must also ensure full traceability of messages from senders to recipients, according to the TRAI's latest amendment to the TCCCPR.

According to the latest regulatory amendment, telecom providers must take action against repeat offenders, barring outgoing services for 15 days for the first violation and a one-year disconnection of services for subsequent offences. Operators will also need to ensure that spammers do not use 10-digit numbers for telemarketing — TRAI regulations require 140 series and 1600 series numbers to be used for promotional and transactional/ service calls, respectively.

The TRAI has also announced stringent penalties for telecom operators for non-compliance. The first violation will invite a penalty of Rs. 2 lakh, while the second and subsequent instances will result in Rs. 5 lakh and Rs. 10 lakh fines, respectively. Senders and telemarketers will need to provide a security deposit, which will be forfeit if the TRAI's norms are violated.

COAI Says TRAI Amendment Issued Without Addressing Issues

In a statement shared with Gadgets 360 on Monday, the COAI said the TRAI's amendment of the TCCCPR was issued "without addressing all relevant issues." Telecom operators had asked the regulator to regulate telemarketer. The COAI also complained that (OTT) service providers were not regulated, claiming that the number of unsolicited communications had seen a "significant increase" on OTT apps.

"[...]it is also concerning that the authority has substantially increased the penalty to be imposed over the TSPs. COAI had submitted that Financial Disincentives (FDs) on TSPs, being only intermediary in this process, do not serve any purpose and have failed to address the issue in TRAI's all attempts to curb UCC. Instead, if at all these penalties are required, it should be directed to TM-D or the PEs who are actual originators and beneficiaries of the commercial communications," said SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI.