Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday came down heavily on spammers (unregistered telemarketers) with a penalty of ₹2-₹10 lakh for recurring and repeated instances of violation.
These provisions are part of amended Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018 which aim to deal with evolving methods of misuse of telecom resources and promote more transparent commercial communication ecosystem for consumers.
In the new provisions, TRAI has mandated all telecom service providers (TSPs) to analyse calls and SMS patterns based on parameters such as unusually high call volumes, short call durations, and low incoming-to-outgoing call ratios to flag potential spammers on real-time basis.
The amendments in the TCCCPR, 2018 come with graded penalty that will be imposed on TSPs in case they fail to implement the provisions. For instance, a financial disincentive (FD) of ₹2 lakh for the first violation, ₹5 lakh for the second instance of violation and ₹10 lakh per instance for subsequent violations, will be imposed on such operators in case of misreporting of the count of UCC, TRAI said.
The new provisions make action against Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) more stringent. For instance, earlier, the provision of suspension was not there and only warning to such telemarketers and that also on ‘10 complaints against the sender in last seven days’, but now it has been made more stringent with suspension on five complaints against the sender in last 10 days.
According to TRAI Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti, these amendments will come with graded penalty that will be imposed on telecom operators in case they fail to implement the provisions of the rule. The telecom service providers (TSPs) have to implement some parts of the regulation in the next 30 days and some specific parts in the next 60 days, he informed.
Complete framework
“This regulation provides the complete framework for the legitimate commercial communications and those legitimate communications include transactional communications, service communications and commercial communications (like banking, life insurance, health services for OTPs). So, this framework intends to promote regulated use of commercial communications,” Lahoti told reporters in a select media briefing.
He said in any ecosystem, there will always be people or entities who will violate the law and carry out certain activities and therefore, they are required to be handled in accordance with that.
“So this regulation has provisions on what action is to be taken if somebody is making a commercial communication without having registered for the same purpose with the success.
However, these provisions will not be applied to Rich Communication Services (RCS) and over-the-top (OTT) messaging platforms because they do not come under the purview of TRAI.
“It doesn’t cover RCS and OTT messaging platforms because currently they come under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),” Lahoti said adding that TRAI is in conversation with MeitY on solution for such platforms too.
He further said that blocking is not the solution to control UCCs, but stringent measures against UCCs should be the way wherein the Authority direct the access providers (telcos) to act against the sender or the telemarketers.