Telecom companies have dialled the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) to expedite notification of guidelines to take stringent action against persons/entities spamming ordinary consumers with unsolicited and unwarranted business communications (UBCs).

In a letter to the Secretary, DoCA, Ministry Of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, the telcos have said that under the guidance of the Department, the Committee (TRAI, BSNL and other telcos) prepared draft guidelines which addressed several pressing issues pertaining to mapping responsibility directly to the source of UBC – or users acting in their individual capacities or as agents of entities such as banks, real-estate agents, etc.

‘Plug holes in system’

“Through these guidelines, the Department can fill an important gap in the existing regulatory regime to curb UBCs...The draft guidelines represent a significant advancement in the combined efforts of the government against UBC, which not only result in frequent inconvenience to consumers but also often bypass the legitimate channels of commercial communications established by the telecom service operators (TSPs),” sources quoting the letter told businessline.

The letter said that with advancing digitisation and voice calls transitioning to over-the-top (OTT) platforms, which presently fall outside the regulatory oversight of the telecom ecosystem, it is becoming more difficult to track such calls and block them.

“The beneficiary users/ businesses (sources of UBC) are getting smarter and are utilising more available platforms beyond traditional voice calls/ messages to reach out to the consumers,” said the letter addressed to DoCA Secretary Nidhi Khare.

The COAI, which represents telcos like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea, said that under the current dispensation, such communication is regulated only through the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, 2018 (TCCCPR) which have been formulated under the TRAI Act, 1997 and therefore it was incomplete and ineffective solution, as there are several entities in the ecosystem that are responsible for the spams that are outside the jurisdiction of TRAI.

Action against UBCs

The TCCCPR imposes obligations on TSPs to address this menace by directing the TSPs to disconnect services of those users who are the source of such communication, it said.

“Therefore, it requires an inclusive effort from different ministries and departments, most importantly the Department of Consumer Affairs, to intensify efforts to ensure that consumer rights are sufficiently protected as the telecom ecosystem today is not adequately empowered to deal with such entities outside its domain,” SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI, added in the letter.

In can be noted that the DoT is working on regulating unsolicited (spam) calls and messages and has sought TRAI’s recommendations.

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