The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday said the complaints against spam calls from unregistered senders were 151,000 in October, a 20% decline from August.
The same assumes significance as Trai in August issued directions, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of regulations would face strict consequences. The directions included disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period.
In August, 189,000 complaints were received by telecom operators. The number reduced to 163,000 in September.
“Consequent to this direction, access providers (telcos) have taken widespread actions which led to a significant reduction in the complaints registered against the spam calls,” Trai said in a release.
On the implementation of enhanced message traceability provision, Trai said more than 13,000 principal entities (PEs) have so far registered their chains with the respective access providers and further registration is in progress at a rapid pace.
To enhance message traceability, Trai in August had issued directions mandating that all messages from senders/principal entities to recipients must be traceable from November 1, 2024. However, to provide a transition time for technical upgrades, and chain declaration by PEs and Telemarketers (TMs), Trai in October extended the deadline upto November 30.
The regulator said all access providers have since implemented the technical solutions on SMS traceability.
“All PEs and TMs are advised to complete the declaration of chains on priority as any message that fails to adhere to the defined telemarketer chain will be rejected,” Trai said.
