The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has tightened its crackdown on spam calls, allowing telecom operators to initiate action against a sender when at least three unique consumers complain about it within 10 days and the sender’s number is also flagged by the operator’s AI system as suspected spam. The move lowers the complaint threshold for action against suspected spammers. Earlier, action could be triggered by five or more unique complaints within 10 days.
Under the amended Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, a telecom service provider (TSP) will be required to identify customer-line numbers (CLIs) with a high probability of being used for spam and share such information with other operators. Further investigation will be mandated after five reported incidents.
The Authority also directed TSPs for using AI/ML-based intelligence on suspected UCC for inter-operator sharing and to carry out further investigation of suspected UCC senders.
“Where five or more CLIs associated with a Sender are flagged within a period of ten days, further investigation and graded action will be initiated by the Access Providers, including KYC re-verification, physical verification, barring of outgoing services, and disconnection of telecom resource in cases of repeated violations and misuse of telecom resources,” the regulator said.
Trai has also mandated that applications cannot blanket-block, filter or tag calls from regulator-designated commercial communication number series such as 1600xx/1601xx and 140xx. Consumers, however, will retain the ability to individually block or filter calls on their devices.
The amendments come against the backdrop of the regulator’s dispute with caller-identification platforms such as Truecaller over the treatment of designated 140xx and 1600xx numbers. While Trai had sought to prevent blanket spam tagging of these numbers, Truecaller has argued that the restrictions could make it harder for consumers to identify unwanted calls from the same series.
The amendments also bring application-to-person (A2P) calls within a specific regulatory framework. Such calls include automated calls initiated through software or applications, including autodialling, robocalls and pre-recorded or artificial voice technologies. Entities using A2P calling will have to declare their use to their telecom service provider and provide details of the CLIs that will be used. Calls made without prior declaration will be treated as Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC).
The telecom regulator has also introduced a termination charge of up to 5 paise per minute for A2P calls, payable by the originating access provider to the terminating access provider. Calls made through numbering series designated for regulated commercial communications, as well as those authorised by Trai, will be exempt from the charge.
For consumers, the regulator has introduced an appeal mechanism against the resolution of UCC complaints. Appeals can be filed within 15 days before the Appellate Authority through existing complaint channels, including the DND app, telecom operators’ apps or portals, and calls or SMS to 1909.
The amended rules also put a seven-day limit on commercial communication based on a customer’s inquiry. Trai said the provision is primarily intended to facilitate e-commerce and e-service platforms.
Trai has strengthened provisions against misuse of headers and content templates. Operators will have to suspend misused headers or templates within six hours of becoming aware of the misuse. Where a telemarketer is found responsible, its telecom resources across operators can be disconnected for one year, along with blacklisting.
The amendments seek to strengthen consumer confidence in the commercial communications ecosystem, increase accountability among stakeholders, and enable faster action against misuse of telecom resources by spammers, Trai said.