Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued directions for enforcement of measures to curb the misuse of messaging services and protect consumers from fraudulent practices.
TRAI has mandated the access service providers to migrate telemarketing calls starting with 140 series to online distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform latest by September 30, 2024, for better monitoring and control. Meanwhile, all access service providers will be prohibited from transmitting messages containing uniform resource locator (URLs), android package kit (APKs), over-the-top (OTT) links, or call back numbers which are not whitelisted by the senders, effective from September 1, 2024.
TRAI has also mandated that the trail of all messages from senders to recipients must be traceable from November 1, 2024, to enhance message traceability. Any message with an undefined or mismatched telemarketer chain will be rejected.
Further, to deter the misuse of templates for promotional content, it has introduced punitive measures for non-compliance. Content templates registered under the wrong category will be blacklisted, and repeated offenses will lead to a one-month suspension of the sender’s services.
Furthermore, to ensure compliance with regulations, all headers and content templates registered on DLT must adhere to prescribed guidelines. Additionally, a single content template cannot be linked to multiple headers. In case misuse of headers or content templates of any sender comes to the notice, TRAI has directed immediate suspension of traffic from all the headers and content templates of that sender for their verification. Revocation of traffic from the sender shall be done only after legal action is taken by the sender against such misuse. Moreover, delivery-telemarketers must identify and report entities responsible for such misuse within two business days, failing which they will face similar consequences.
These measures have been taken forward TRAI’s initiatives to ensure a clean and secure messaging ecosystem, safeguarding consumer interests and preventing fraudulent activities.
