The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has introduced new tough rules targeting unauthorised callers and marketing companies to combat the growing problem of unwanted calls.
These measures are intended to reduce unsolicited promotional communications, including automated or pre-recorded ones.
Under the new regulations, all Access Services Providers must immediately halt any promotional voice calls originating from unregistered senders or telemarketers using telecom resources such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) or PRI (Primary Rate Interface).
The regulations mandate severe penalties for any unregistered sender or telemarketer found in violation, which would result in consumer complaints.
Specifically, the Originating Access Provider (OAP) must disconnect the offending party’s telecom resources for up to two years.
Additionally, the Governance Access Provider (GAP) is tasked with blacklisting the sender for the same period. Furthermore, the GAP must notify other Access Providers via the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform within 24 hours, and these providers must disconnect all resources allocated to the sender within 24 hours.
During the blacklisting period, no new telecom resources can be allocated to the sender by any Access Provider.
The regulations also require that all unregistered senders and telemarketers using telecom resources be migrated to the DLT platform within one month of the directive’s issuance and submit a compliance report within seven days of this migration.
“All Access Providers have been directed to comply with these directions and submit regular updates on the actions taken on the 1st and 16th of every month,” notes the directive.
To combat international spam calls, the government of India blocked international spoofed calls showing Indian numbers.
With a large population of about 1.4 billion and little cybersecurity knowledge, India has been a focus country for spammers. In July 2024, it was reported that Russian threat actors were targeting Indian political observers in an operation dubbed Op ShadowCat.
Furthermore, in the same month, the Chinese Smishing Triad targeted Indian users via the India Post phishing scams.
Another scam impersonating the Regional Transport Office (RTO) was found to target Indian users via WhatsApp.
The private sector has also come abroad to combat spam in India. In May 2024, WhatsApp unveiled temporary message restrictions in their Android 2.24.10.5 beta update. Last year, the company introduced the Call Silencing feature to mitigate the threat of spam calls.
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