The Indian government has blacklisted over 200,000 unauthorised telemarketers for making unsolicited calls. This means the defaulter person or entity will not get any telecom connection for period of two years from the date they were named in the list.
As per data shared by the Ministry of Communications and IT, the number of blacklisted entities stood at 224,341 till July 3, 2014.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has notified the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007, which puts in place a framework for controlling unsolicited commercial communications. Further, to improve the effectiveness of the framework, TRAI has subsequently amended these regulations from time to time.
As per TRAI norms, all telecom operators are mandated to disconnect telephone numbers from which pesky calls or sms originate, on receipt of the first complaint. The name and address of that telephone subscriber is then shared with all other service providers, such that no service provider will provide any telecom resource in that name and address for a period of two years.
Telecom operators have stated that till July 3, 2014, over 940,000 complaints have been registered, acting on which the government has disconnected 494,688 telephone connections.
TRAI has sent notices to 403 registered telemarketers as well for making pesky calls. The regulator has deducted total of Rs 17.30 million from security amount of telemarketers who were found guilty.
