Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday said that complaints against spam calls show a downward trend due to the stringent measures taken in August this year. Complaints against such calls have reduced by 20 per cent in October since August.
“The number of registered complaints against unregistered senders, as reported by the access providers, were 1.89 lakh in August, which have reduced to 1.63 lakh in September (13 per cent reduction from August) and 1.51 lakh in October (20 per cent reduction from August),” the sector regulator said.
TRAI issued Directions on August 13, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of regulations would face strict consequences. This includes disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period.
“Consequent to this Direction, access providers have taken widespread actions which led to a significant reduction in the complaints registered against the spam calls,” TRAI said.
Similarly, in terms of messages, for which TRAI issued Direction on August 20, and mandated that the trail of all messages from senders/principal entities to recipients must be traceable from November 1, all access providers have since implemented the technical solutions, it said.
Technical upgrades
However, to provide a transition time for technical upgrades, and chain declaration by Principal Entities (PEs) and Telemarketers (TMs), TRAI through its Direction on October 28, extended the time up to November 30.
“To raise awareness about these measures and action to be taken by PEs and RTMs, webinars are organised under the aegis of TRAI. The first webinar was conducted on November 12 in association with Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIL)... the second webinar was conducted in association with Vodafone Idea (VIL) on November 19,” TRAI informed.
It said another webinar is scheduled for November 25, in association with Tata Teleservices, as part of this series and invitations have been sent the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, other Central and State governments departments, the entities being regulated by RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and IRDAl, Nasscom, Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE) and other organisations, it said.
“As a result of these efforts, more than 13,000 PEs already registered their chains with the respective access providers and further registration is in progress at a rapid pace... All PEs and TMs are advised to complete the declaration of chains on priority as any message that fails to adhere to the defined telemarketer chain will be rejected,” TRAI added.