Spam has taken center stage as Sweden-based Truecaller spars with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India over a suitable definition for such calls and messages. TRAI has already sought authorisation from the IT ministry to act against call management apps — facing vehement pushback as it seeks to stop Truecaller from filtering, or tagging calls that come from officially designated commercial number series.
TRAI had introduced special phone numbers a few years ago to help people identify genuine business calls. But the system has created confusion, with Truecaller explaining in a recent report that millions were now ignoring even real bank and company calls. The regulatory body took a slightly different stance on the matter: suggesting that apps like Truecaller were making the problem worse by discouraging users from answering such calls.
The clash also began mere days after the global communications platform released a comprehensive study on the role of voice calls as a customer engagement channel in India. ‘The State of Business Calling 2026’ report highlighted a striking paradox — 76% of consumers prefer calls over digital alternatives but 79%of businesses said customers actively avoid answering calls from unrecognized numbers. It also reported that voice was witnessing a quiet erosion in trust despite emerging as the most trusted channel for business communication — ahead of email, SMS, and chat combined. Spam, lack of context, inconsistent caller identity, and poorly timed outreach have created a default reluctance among consumers that affects even legitimate, compliant businesses.
‘Apps have to follow the law’: TRAI
TRAI Chairman A K Lahoti reiterated the official stance in an exclusive conversation with Financial Express on Friday. He noted that apps were mandated to “follow the law of the land” and could not “tinker with regulatory norms”.
“The 1600 series is a designated series for banking transactions for existing banking customers…Now, if the app flags this series as spam, the service call gets disrupted. The customer is not able to receive service calls from banks. It is a breach of communication,” he told FE.
Lahoti explained that the 1600 series has been specifically designated for banks and other regulated entities of the BFSI sector — to be used for their existing customers and by government entities for government-to-citizen communication.
“The 1600 series is a designated series for banking transactions for existing banking customers. High-value transactions and other customer queries are channelised through this number series. A customer may need a loan, and the bank will respond through this number. A customer may have incurred a high-value transaction, and the bank wants to intimate or cross-check it. This number series is used. It’s a genuine service call,” he added.
‘This is neither pro-consumer nor anti-spam’: Truecaller
Meanwhile Truecaller insists that both consumers and legitimate businesses have lost out as a sharply rising number of people manually block calls from these numbers. Users of the call management app reportedly block about 4 lakh calls from the 140 series and 1.25 lakh calls from the 1600 series every day.
“The aim of the designated series (140/1600) was to create a channel that is trusted, and what has happened is they’ve created a channel which is distrusted,” Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala told Financial Express during an exclusive interview on Friday.
He added that Truecaller had repeatedly warned TRAI that its mandate was “not reducing spam in any way” but eroding trust with consumers. Jhunjhunwala told FE that the company had flagged issues soon after TRAI directed caller ID apps to whitelist all numbers from the 140 and 1600 series — jibing that spammers were “really enjoying themselves” after this change.
“I don’t see how that is pro-consumer. I also don’t see how this is anti-spammer; consumers are suffering because they’re getting spammed, and spammers are happy that it’s whitelisted on Truecaller,” he added.