The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued directions to all access providers to develop and deploy the digital consent acquisition (DCA) facility for creating a unified platform and process to register customers’ consent digitally across all service providers and principal entities (PEs). TRAI has allocated two months time to develop such facilities by all access providers and thereafter implement it in a phased manner. This direction has been issued by TRAI under its Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR 2018). The directions follow the various steps taken by TRAI to curb the menace of spam through unsolicited commercial communication (UCC).
In the current system, consent is obtained and maintained by various entities such as banks, other financial institutions, insurance companies, trading companies, business entities, real state companies etc, referred to as PEs in TCCCPR, 2018. Therefore, it is not possible for the access providers to check the veracity of the consent. Further, there is no unified system for customers to provide or revoke consent.
According to TRAI, the DCA process shall have the facility to seek, maintain and revoke the consent of customers, as per the processes envisaged under TCCCPR 2018. The consent data so collected will be shared on digital ledger platform for scrubbing by all access providers.
Further, access providers have been directed to use a common short code ‘127xxx’ for sending consent-seeking messages. The purpose, scope of the consent and PE/brand name shall be mentioned clearly in the consent-seeking message sent through the short code. Only whitelisted uniform resource locators (URLs)/Android application packages (APKs)/over-the-top (OTT) links/call back numbers etc. shall be used in the consent seeking messages. Moreover, access providers shall develop an SMS/IVR/online facility to register the unwillingness of the customers to receive any consent seeking messages initiated by any PE.
In the first phase, only subscriber-initiated consent acquisition has been permitted by TRAI. Subsequently, PE-initiated consent acquisition shall be permitted. Initially, PEs belonging to the banking, insurance, finance and trading related sectors shall be on-boarded to initiate the consent acquisition process and the remaining sectors shall be onboarded subsequently.
