Pesky calls: Watchdog holds off on new rules to avoid over-regulation

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: Guidelines to make unsolicited calls and spam SMSes illegal have been kept in abeyance for now by the country’s top consumer watchdog.

Reason: the regulator’s belief that steps have already been taken and things have improved, and to avoid over-regulation, two people aware of the matter said on the condition of anonymity. According to the first person, the department of consumer affairs (DoCA), the parent organization of Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), believes that telecom regulator Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has taken corrective measures to curb unwanted calls, and the CCPA has observed a change in the behaviour of telecom service providers.

“Telecom service providers are working closely with Trai to reduce unwanted calls by adopting measures such as colour coding to identify spam and marketing calls, along with changes in registered caller identification," said the second person cited above. “Given these efforts, the CCPA is considering putting on hold the issuance of separate guidelines for handling pesky calls." To be sure, Bharti Airtel’s vice chairman and managing director Gopal Vittal said during the release of the company’s quarterly report in February that Airtel’s anti-spam tool “has brought significant relief, notifying nearly 252 million unique customers and effectively combating the SPAM menace".

Also read | Mint Explainer: Trai's latest crackdown on spam calls—inside the latest measures Vittal added that the spam tool identifies more than one million unique spammers making more than 130 million calls daily. “Additionally, our solution detects over 7 million spam SMSes daily," he said.