The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken significant measures to curb the menace of spam calls and prevent the misuse of SMS headers and content templates by unscrupulous elements in forwarding malicious/fraudulent messages. These measures are aimed at safeguarding consumer interests and ensuring a clean and secure messaging ecosystem.

The key actions taken include:

  • Stringent measures against spam calls- TRAI issued directions on August 13, 2024, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of regulations would face strict consequences. This includes disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period. In response to these directions, over 800 entities/individuals have been blacklisted, and more than 1.8 million session initiation protocol (SIP) direct inward dialling (DID)/mobile numbers/telecom resources have been disconnected which is a significant step towards cleansing the systems of commercial calls.
  • Mandatory uniform resource locator (URL), android package kit (APK), and over-the-top (OTT) link whitelisting- In compliance with TRAI’s directions dated August 20, 2024, access providers have implemented mandatory whitelisting of URLs, APKs, or OTT links in messages with effect from October 1, 2024. This way, only safe and approved links can get through SMS, protecting consumers from harmful or fake websites, apps, or other online threats.
  • Migration for telemarketing calls to distributed ledger technology (DLT) (blockchain) platform- With effect from October 1, 2024, telemarketing calls starting with 140xx numbering series have been migrated to DLT (Blockchain) platform for strict monitoring and control.
  • Enhanced message traceability- Access providers have implemented technical solutions to ensure traceability of entities (senders/principal entities {PE}) involved in sending a message to recipients. This new system ensures that each person who handles the message, from sender to final delivery, is tracked. This involves defining PE-telemarketers (TMs) chain through which messages travel before reaching the access provider. To provide a transition time for awareness, technical upgrades, and chain declaration, TRAI, vide its direction dated October 28, 2024, in partial modification of its earlier direction dated August 20, 2024, has directed access providers to ensure PE-TM chain declaration by all PEs and TMs at the earliest, and PEs and TMs who default on PE-TM chain binding to be issued a warning by respective access providers on daily basis until November 30, 2024. With effect from December 1, 2024, any traffic (messages) where the chain of TMs is not defined or does not match with pre-defined chain shall be rejected.