The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are taking collaborative steps to enhance the experience of users of telecom services. DoT and the TRAI have been continuously engaged towards enhancing telecom services and security in India, through policies, ensuring infrastructure development, quality-of-service (QoS), and complaint redressal.
Several measures have been initiated in this regard to enable spam free quality telecom service with high speed data. To curb the menace of spam calls, TRAI has directed telecom operators to disconnect and blacklist entities using bulk connections for spam calls, including robocalls and pre-recorded calls. In the last fortnight, over 0.35 million such numbers have been disconnected and 50 entities have been blacklisted. In addition, around 0.35 million unused/unverified SMS headers and 1.2 million content templates have been blocked.
Meanwhile, DoT launched a citizen centric platform called Sanchar Saathi to fight cyber fraud, enabling citizens to report suspicious calls and messages. Till date, more than 10 million fraudulent mobile connections have been disconnected with the help of Sanchar Saathi. Further, 0.22 million mobile handsets have been blocked for involvement in cybercrime /financial frauds.
Parallely, TRAI has released its revised regulations, “The Standards of QoS of Access (Wirelines and Wireless) and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024 (06 of 2024)’ with an objective of improving the network performance by gradually tightening the benchmarks for key network parameters like network availability, call drop rates, and packet drop rates. These regulations will be effective from October 1, 2024. Furthermore, monthly monitoring of QoS performance of mobile service will be started instead of quarterly basis from April 1, 2025.
TRAI has also issued consultation papers on provisions of immediate suspension of services of unregistered telemarketers on receipt of complaints beyond a pre-defined threshold number, and implementation of proactive detection and action on suspected spammers.
