Telecom watchdog, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a joint action plan with other regulators are working on different technologies to detect pesky calls and messages to curb financial frauds.
Trai said that Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) or pesky communication causes a major inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals.
“Now complaints are reported against Unregistered Telemarketers (UTMs), where a surge has been seen in pushing various kinds of UCC SMSes. Additionally, UCC calls are also one of the concerns which need to be dealt with equally along with UCC SMSes,” it said.
“Trai in coordination with various stakeholders is taking necessary steps to check UCC from UTMs also.
“These steps include implementation of UCC detect system, provision of Digital Consent Acquisition, intelligent scrubbing of the Headers and Message templates, using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Language), etc,” the statement said.
In order to curb pesky calls and messages, Trai issued the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 and it created an ecosystem based on blockchain (Distributed Ledger Technology-DLT).
The regulation mandates registration of all commercial promoters and telemarketers to register on DLT platform and seek customer consent for receiving various kinds of promotional messages at time and day of their choice.
Around 2.5 lakh principal entities have registered with over six lakh headers and approximately 55 lakh approved message templates which are being pushed to consumers through registered telemarketers and TSPs using DLT platforms.
The regulator said that the framework has resulted in substantial reduction of customer complaints to the extent of 60 percent for the registered telemarketers.
However, non-registered pesky callers continue to spam mobile subscribers.
Trai has also taken an initiative to form a Joint Committee of Regulators (JCOR) comprising Reserve Bank of India, Securities & Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) and Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) to chalk out a joint action plan to curb financial frauds using telecom resources.
“In the recent meeting of JCOR held on November 10, 2022, which was attended by the representatives of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) also, measures to curb the UCC further were deliberated in detail,” Trai said.
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