Spam calls: TRAI urges immediate solutions from telecom providers

New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has intensified its efforts to address the rising issue of unsolicited commercial calls. On August 6, TRAI held a meeting with Access Service Providers and Delivery Telemarketers to tackle this pervasive problem.

The meeting addressed the misuse of headers and content templates by unauthorised entities, which has contributed to a surge in unsolicited messages, undermining consumer trust and breaching regulatory norms. The discussions focused on examining the steps taken by Access Service Providers and Delivery Telemarketers to identify and trace the offenders responsible for sending such messages.

Key issues included the regulation of promotional calls, such as robotic, auto-dialler and pre-recorded calls. The discussion also covered the migration of all enterprise business customers to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform to ensure compliance with TRAI's regulations for bulk communications.

TRAI urged all stakeholders, particularly Access Service Providers and Delivery Telemarketers, to take proactive measures. This includes implementing technical solutions for better traceability and preventing bulk calling by enterprise customers using 10-digit numbers through Primary Rate Interface (PRI) or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

The regulator emphasised the need for immediate and effective action from service providers and telemarketers to curb bulk communications via voice calls. TRAI called for the adoption of robust technical solutions and stricter oversight to ensure adherence to regulatory standards. (Agencies)