Trai mulls regulating SMS, voice tariffs beyond certain limit to curb spam

financialexpress.com:

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Wednesday said there is a need to review and put in place provisions, including regulating tariff for SMS and voice calls beyond a certain limit, to curb unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) from unregistered telemarketers (UTMs) using 10-digit numbers.

The same assumes significance in light of the increase in complaints against unregistered telemarketers sending spam calls and messages through 10-digit phone numbers. Trai noted that there is a possibility that UTMs may be using unlimited voice call package tariff offers of the service providers to push a large number of promotional voice calls to consumers using multiple connections.

“As such, the availability of an alternate path for pushing large quantum of messages/calls by UTMs using 10-digit numbers defeats the purpose and framework envisaged under TCCCPR-2018 (Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations),” Trai said in a consultation paper on review of TCCCPR-2018 regulations.

According to January-March quarter data shared by telecom operators with Trai, 99.38% of the 1.16 billion telecom subscribers send less than or equal to 10 SMS per day per SIM. Only 364,127 (0.03% of total subscribers) send between 51 to 100 SMS per SIM per day, whereas only 47,427 (0.004% of total subscribers) send more than 100 SMS per SIM per day.

Average number of outgoing voice calls per day per SIM reveals that 99.87% of the telecom subscribers make up to 50 outgoing voice calls per day per SIM. Only 78,703 (0.01% of total subscribers) make more than 100 voice calls per day per SIM.

“It is felt that differential tariff may make commercial communication using 10-digit numbers unviable for unregistered