A meeting of Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) was convened by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 21, 2024 at TRAI headquarter (HQ) in New Delhi. The JCoR is a collaborative initiative by TRAI to study regulatory implications in the digital world and to collaboratively work on regulations.

The meeting was addressed by Anil Kumar Lahoti, chairmzn, TRAI. Meanwhile, the meeting was attended by the representatives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) and TRAI as members of JCoR, and representatives from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as special invitees.

Unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) is a major source of inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals. UCC is also adopted for misuse by fraudsters. Various possible collaborative approaches and measures to deal with UCC and frauds through telecom resources were discussed in the meeting. The key issues discussed include:

  • Unsolicited calls from unauthorised 10-digit mobile numbers as also from landline numbers.
  • Use of 140 series by the principal entities (PEs) (entities making commercial communication using telecom resources) for malking promotional calls.
  • Use of 160 series by the PEs for making service and transactional calls for easy identification by the consumers.
  • Role of PE, particularly entities in BFSI (banking, finance services and insurance) sector in prevention of UCC calls and messages.
  • Acquisition of digital consents by the PEs through digital consent acquisition (DCA) system established by the telecom service providers (TSPs) through a simple and transparent process with due verification from the customer using one-time password (OTP). DCA also permits revocation of the consents by the customers.
  • Whitelisting of URLs/APKs/over-the-top (OTT) links/call back numbers in the content templates.
  • Control of frauds using telecom resources and further strengthening the know-your-customer (KYC) process.
  • Sharing of information through platforms.