Trai plans more action to check spam callers
telecom regulator is considering if differential punitive tariffs for spam callers from personal numbers could help check spam calling and messaging. According to an analysis, there were nearly 14 lakh SIMs making between 50-1000 calls per day during the January-March 2024 period, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said in a consultation paper released Wednesday. Four SIMs were making more than 1000 calls per day. These are likely to be spam callers who disregard Trai’s norms defined for commercial calling.
Similarly, there were 4 lakh SIMs found to be sending more than 50 SMSs per day. Though telecom companies have blocked 59,000 such numbers in calendar years 2022-23 cumulatively, spammers continue to purchase new SIM cards, Trai data showed.
As bundled mobile packs allow unlimited voice calling and 100 per day, unregistered telemarketers (UTMs) may be pushing “large numbers of promotional voice calls to consumers using multiple connections,” TRAI said.
“In view of this, a need is felt to review and put in place provisions, including regulating tariff for SMS and Voice calls beyond a certain limit, to curb UCC (unsolicited commercial communication) from UTMs using 10-digit numbers (p2p).”
To be sure, complaints against genuine enterprises, who have onboarded the blockchain system mandated by Trai, have come down drastically. Between April 2020 to December 2023, complaints against registered senders had reduced to 1.40 lakh from 3.49 lakh.
But the blatant misuse of personal SIM cards is defeating
