TRAI cracks down on unsolicited telemarketing with new guidelines for telecom providers

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued new guidelines to telecommunications providers in order to combat the misuse of Headers and Message Templates by telemarketers and prevent unauthorized promotions using telecom resources under TCCCPR-2018. 

TRAI observed that some Telemarketers are misusing the Headers and Message Templates of Principal Entities (PEs). To address this issue, TRAI has instructed service providers to reverify all registered Headers & Message Templates on the DLT platform and to block all unverified Headers and Message Templates within 30 and 60 days, respectively.

Temporary Headers should be deactivated immediately by telcos after the duration for which they were created has expired. Telcos should also not register look-alike Headers in the names of different Principal Entities, according to TRAI’s directives.

To prevent unauthorized telemarketing messages, TRAI has instructed telecom providers to ban all Telemarketers who are not registered on the Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) platform from handling message template scrubbing and message delivery to recipients through Access Providers’ networks.

TRAI has also instructed telcos to ensure that promotional messages are not transmitted by unregistered Telemarketers or Telemarketers using telephone numbers. Telcos must take action against any Telemarketers that violate these guidelines and regulations and initiate legal proceedings as necessary. Access Service Providers should also share details of such Telemarketers with other Access Providers, who will prevent these entities from sending commercial communications through their networks.

Telecom Service Providers have 30 days to comply with these directives, according to TRAI. It is worth noting that TRAI recently implemented a blockchain-based ecosystem (Distributed Ledger Technology, or DLT) to combat Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC).