Trai makes ‘140’ series numbers for commercial calls must from July

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has given time till July to principal entities such as banks, insurance companies, other brands, etc, and their telemarketers to switch to the ‘140’ series of phone numbers to make promotional calls.

For shifting service and transactional calls to the ‘160’ series, the companies have been given time till August, according to officials.

The same assumes significance as amid the ongoing menace of spam calls from 10-digit numbers, with many leading to financial frauds, the consumers now will be able to identify and trust the service calls or transactional calls from 140 and 160 series, officials said.

This comes as Trai on Tuesday held a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) on the issue of Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC). The meeting  was attended by the representatives of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) and Trai as members of JCoR and representatives from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as special invitees.

As part of the meeting, the joint committee of regulators discussed issues such as menace of spam calls from 10-digit numbers by unregistered entities, role of principal entities, particularly in BFSI (Banking, Finance, Services & Insurance) sector in prevention of UCC calls and messages, acquisition of digital consents by the principal entities through Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system to receive commercial communication, whitelisting of Urls/Apks/OTT links/call back numbers in the message content templates.

Besides, the regulators discussed further strengthening the know your customer (KYC) norms for control of frauds using telecom resources.

“UCC is a major source of inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals. Various possible collaborative approaches and measures to deal with UCC and frauds through telecom resources were discussed in the meeting,” Trai said in a statement.

Officials said, Trai will keep a tab on calling patterns of users if they are making bulk calls using 10-digit numbers. The regulator will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect the pattern of calls, and from which locations they are being made.

The plan is to also restrict the call centres from using 10-digit numbers for communications going forward, according to officials.

Lately, the department of consumer affairs is working to release draft guidelines to control unwanted spam calls and messages. Once the new guidelines are issued and implemented, it would be the first time that banks, fintech companies, real estate developers, and others, will be directly held liable for such spam communication as these entities outsource their promotional sales to third-party agencies.

According to a recent survey by community social media platform LocalCircles, 60% of mobile subscribers get three or more spam calls on an average every day. Most unwanted calls are related to financial services and real estate.

The survey said 54% of respondents are receiving pesky calls from companies such as Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, HDFC Life Insurance, IDFC First Bank, among others, while 22% are getting calls from companies selling real estate.