Measures being taken by TRAI to Combat Spam Calls and SMS

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken several measures to combat the persistence issue of spam calls and SMS.

1. Complaintsagainst Spam Calls show downward trend due to Stringent Measures: TRAI issued Directions on 13^thAugust 2024, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of regulations would face strict consequences. This includes disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period. Consequent to this Direction, Access Providers have taken widespread actions which led to a significant reduction in the complaints registered against the spam calls. The number of registered complaints against unregistered senders, as reported by the Access Providers, were 1.89 lakh in August 2024 which have reduced to 1.63 lakh in September 2024 (13% reduction from August 2024) and 1.51 lakh in October 2024 (20% reduction from August 2024).
2. Good Progress in implementation of Enhanced Message Traceability:To enhance message traceability, TRAI issued Direction on 20^th August 2024 and mandated that the trail of all messages from Senders/Principal Entities to recipients must be traceable from 1^st November 2024.All Access Providers have since implemented the technical solutions. However, to provide a transition time fortechnical upgrades, and chain declaration by Principal Entities (PEs) and Telemarketers (TMs), TRAI, vide its Direction dated 28^th October 2024, extended the timeupto 30^th November 2024.

To raise awareness about these measures and action to be taken by PEs and RTMs, webinars are organized under the aegis of TRAI. The first webinar was conducted on 12^th November 2024 in association with Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL) and was attended by over 1000 representatives from entities being regulated by RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and IRDAI. The second webinar was conducted in association withVodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) on19^th November 2024 and was attended by over 800 representatives from Central and State Governments Departments and the entities being regulated by RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and IRDAI. In this series, another webinar is scheduled for 25^thNovember 2024 and shall be conducted in association withTata Teleservices Ltd. (TTL). Invitations have been sent the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, other Central and State Governments Departments, the entities being regulated by RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and IRDAI; Nasscom, Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE) and other organization.

As a result of these efforts, more than thirteen thousand PEs have already registered their chains with the respective Access Providers and further registration is in progress at a rapid pace. Access Providers have sent many warning notices to all Principal Entities (PEs) and Registered Telemarketers (RTMs) who have not yet implemented necessary changes.  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.