The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has further extended the deadline to December 11, 2024, for the implementation of the traceability mandate for commercial messages, including one-time passwords (OTPs).
This would give more time to telcos and telemarketers to fix the technical details and avoid any disruption of delivery of messages.
After assessing the progress of PE-TM chain declaration, inconsideration of the request from access provider/Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and in partial modification of its earlier direction dated October 28, 2024, TRAI has directed access providers to ensure PE-TM chain declaration by all PEs and TMs latest by December 10, 2024, and has informed that it will continue issuing the warning to the PEs and TMs who default on PE-TM chain binding on daily basis. With effect from December 11, 2024, any traffic (messages) where the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match with pre-defined chain shall be rejected.
TRAI had initially issued direction on August 20, 2024, and mandated that all commercial messages from senders to recipients must be traceable from November 1, 2024. In compliance of these directions, all access providers have since deployed the required technical solutions. However, to provide a transition time for technical upgrades, and chain declaration by senders of commercial messages i.e. principal entities (PEs) and telemarketers (TMs), TRAI had further extended the deadline up to November 30, 2024.
More than twenty-seven thousand PEs have already registered their chains with the respective access providers and further registration is in progress at a rapid pace. Access providers have sent and are continuing to send warning notices to all PEs and TMs who have not yet implemented necessary changes.
