According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), over 10,000 business entities have whitelisted more than 275,000 URLs following guidance from the TRAI issued in August 2024.
The TRAI instructed all access service providers to cease the transmission of messages containing URLs, APKs, and OTT links that are not whitelisted by the senders, effective October 1, 2024.
Meanwhile, to combat spam calls, TRAI has implemented stricter measures, including the disconnection of telecom resources for violators. Over 800 entities have been blacklisted, and more than 1.8 million numbers have been disconnected due to non-compliance.
Additionally, TRAI has mandated the migration of telemarketing calls using the 140 series to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform to enhance monitoring and reduce misuse. Other measures include blocking 350,000 unused headers and 1.2 million content templates that are prone to fraud, further protecting consumers.
Access providers are currently working on technical solutions to improve message traceability. This includes requiring senders to define the complete chain of transactional messages (TMs) through which messages travel before reaching consumers, ensuring that senders’ headers and content templates are not exploited by fraudulent actors.
Through expanded collaboration with agencies like RBI, SEBI, and IRDAI via the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR), TRAI continues to strengthen control over commercial communications and explore future enhancements.
