New Delhi, Aug 13 (Representative) Taking a tough stand against the menace of pesky or unsolicited communications, telecom regulator TRAI has issued a direction to all service providers to disconnect telecom resources of “unregistered” senders for making spam calls and to “blacklist” such senders. TRAI’s such action comes in the wake of observation that there were more than 12 lakh complaints against Unregistered Telemarketers Senders during 2023 and more than 7.9 lakh complaints against UTM Senders during first half of 2024.In a major step to curb the increasing number of spam calls, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated all Access Service Providers to stop voice promotional calls whether pre-recorded or computer generated or otherwise from all Unregistered Senders or Telemarketers (UTMs). According to the direction issued, all promotional voice calls from the unregistered Senders/ Unregistered Telemarketer (UTMs) using Telecom Resources (SIP/ PRI/ other telecom resources) shall be stopped immediately.
If any unregistered Sender/ Unregistered Telemarketer (UTM) is found to be misusing its Telecom Resources for making commercial voice calls in violation of the regulations resulting into consumer complaints against any one or more number of resource indicators allocated to the Sender – all the telecom resources of such Sender shall be disconnected by the Originating Access Provider (OAP) for a period up to two years as per the provisions of the regulation. Such Sender shall be blacklisted by the GAP for a period up to two years as per the provisions of the regulations, TRAI said adding information regarding blacklisting of the Sender shall be shared by the GAP with all other Access Providers on DLT platform, within 24 hours, who will, in turn, disconnect all the telecom resources given by them to that Sender within the next 24 hours.No new telecom resources shall be allocated to such Sender by any Access Provider during the period of blacklisting as provided for in the regulations and all the unregistered Senders/ Unregistered Telemarketers (UTMs) using SIP/PRI/ other telecom resources to make commercial voice calls to the citizen shall be migrated to the DLT platform within one month of the issue of this Direction and submit compliance report within seven days thereafter.All Access Providers have been directed to comply with these directives and submit regular updates on the actions taken on the 1st and 16th of every month. This decisive action by the TRAI is expected to significantly reduce spam calls and provide relief to consumers.