The Trai way to killing pesky calls

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Judging by the intensely negative reactions one has seen to telemarketing from telephone subscribers, one wonders whether such unsolicited calls are indeed worth the while for various businesses. Yet, seeing the persistence with which it is pursued, there must be profits in this business. And if there are profits in telemarketing, there is bound to be attempts to reach as many gullible ears as possible irrespective of the regulations meant to ensure some semblance of order and civility in the entire scheme.

Under pressure from public complaints, the intervention of Parliament, the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had last year issued a regulation setting up the National Do Not Call (NDNC) register with a view to containing the menace of unsolicited commercial calls. Apparently, to date, only 8.3 million phone users out of over 200 million have registered for the ‘do not call’ facility with the NDNC. This could imply one of the two things. Either the number of persons sufficiently annoyed by unsolicited calls to take steps to register themselves with the NDNC is a small percentage of all users, or there is a limitation in the regulation with regard to the procedural aspects. Even though the percentage of users registered with the NDNC is small, the absolute numbers are not insignificant.

Could a better arrangement have been to put all numbers in the NDNC register, and when requested, a specific number could be removed from the register? This approach has been voiced by some telecom operators in the press. How many persons would be willing to voluntarily seek listening to advertisements? Not withstanding the negatives of telemarketing, it is a legal and possibly even welcome means to learn about commercial products. Therefore, the existing arrangement of registration by the customer is the right approach. Why then there are so many complaints still persisting? It becomes, therefore, more important to analyse the regulation and its effectiveness. It is evident that the recently issued amendment to the original regulation is meant to make the regulation more effective.