In a renewed attempt to curb the menace of pesky calls and messages, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Thursday asked telecom operators to reverify registered SMS templates used by companies for messages and bar unauthorised telemarketers.
Trai said it has observed misuse of headers and SMS templates for promotional messages, with telemarketers found inserting undesirable content.
Telcos have been asked to block unverified headers and message templates on DLT (distributed ledger technology) platforms within 30 and 60 days, respectively. The companies have to ensure immediate deactivation of temporary headers after the duration for which they were created and easy identification of entities involved in sending promotional messages.
Businesses who send bulk promotional or transactional SMS need to register on DLT platforms, run by telecom operators, by providing their business details, including sender IDs and SMS templates.
“Access providers have been directed to bar all telemarketers who are not registered on DLT platforms from handling the message template scrubbing and delivery of messages to recipients through access providers’ network,” Trai said.
Nearly 80% of the approximately five million templates registered on DLT are inactive for a period of six months, providing infiltrators an opportunity to misuse the templates, according to D Uday Reddy, chairman & CEO of Tanla Platforms, a cloud communications company. “Variable elements in templates are also being abused to insert inappropriate content in the text messages. Adherence to Trai’s directives shall certainly bring much-required discipline and help enterprises in managing their DLT assets,” Reddy said.
According to a survey by community social media platform LocalCircles, nine in 10 subscribers complain of getting pesky or unwanted calls for brand promotion or sales despite registering for the Do Not Disturb (DND) service of their respective operator. The report said the DND service is ineffective in the sense that the unwanted calls come from personal mobile numbers and not landline or commercial numbers of a particular brand, bypassing the DND system.
Trai has asked telecom companies to also ensure that promotional messages are not transmitted by telemarketers using 10-digit numbers and to take action against all erring telemarketers as per the regulations.
“Unless stringent actions are taken, the menace of pesky calls is unlikely to subside. The system should work in a way that after a certain number of unique subscriber complaints are received the number is blacklisted for outbound calls for a period leading to permanent blacklisting,” the LocalCircles report said.
Trai is also expected to meet telecom operators on Friday to discuss the quality of services (QoS), review current quality standards, QoS for 5G services, and unsolicited commercial communications.