DoT for Rs 20,000 fine on erring telemarkers

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has proposed that the government increase financial penalty for unauthorised interception of communication to Rs 2 crore, from Rs 1lakh.

According to a recent discussion, DoT has said this as input on the Draft Rights to Privacy Bill, 2012. DoT has also suggested that every unsolicited commercial call by a telemarketer invite a penalty of Rs 20,000.

In its recommendations on the proposed Rights to Privacy Bill, DoT has also suggested that interception of phone calls be allowed, as without interception it cannot be established whether a call made to a phone subscriber was unsolicited or not.

Under the regulations of the Telecom regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on pesky calls and SMSes, a penalty of Rs 25,000 has to be deducted from the deposit of registered telemarketers on the first violation. The penalty increases step by step and goes up to Rs 2.5 lakh at the sixth violation.However, Trai had last week said it has amended the rule. Under the new norm, any subscriber found to be using telecom service for unsolicited commercial communications would face immediate disconnection and would be blacklisted for two years.

It has also issued a norm imposing five paise as termination charge on each transactional short message service (SMS) and two paise on each normal SMS, on operators from whose networks the message originates. The new regulation - Short Message Services (SMS) Termination Charges Regulations, 2013 - will be effective from June 1, 2013. At present, some operators charge a termination fee of up to 10 paise per SMS, based on mutual agreements, though it is not compulsory.

Telcos get about 18 per cent of their revenue from value-added services, of which about 40 per cent comes from SMS.

In November 2012, Trai had said consumers would be charged not less than 50 paise per SMS after a threshold of 100 a day. The Trai directive came as part of the regulator's endeavour to curb unsolicited SMS and calls, which continue to be a major problem even after imposing spam guidelines.