Tech to detect pesky calls underway; joint action on financial frauds: TRAI

Telecom regulator Trai on Monday said that it is working on various technologies to detect pesky calls and messages along with a joint action plan with other regulators to curb financial frauds.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said that Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) or pesky communication is a major source of inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals.

"Now complaints are reported against Unregistered Telemarketers (UTMs), where a surge has been seen in pushing various kinds of UCC SMSes. Additionally, UCC calls are also one of the concerns which need to be dealt with equally along with UCC SMSes," it said.

Trai in coordination with various stakeholders is taking necessary steps to check UCC from UTMs also. These steps include implementation of UCC detect system, provision of Digital Consent Acquisition, intelligent scrubbing of the Headers and Message templates, using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Language), etc," the statement said.

To curb the menace of pesky calls and messages, Trai issued the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 that created an ecosystem based on blockchain (Distributed Ledger Technology-DLT).

The regulation mandates registration of all commercial promoters and telemarketers to register on DLT platform and seek customer consent for receiving various kinds of promotional messages at time and day of their choice.

Under the framework, about 2.5 lakh principal entities have been registered with more than 6 lakh headers and approximately 55 lakh approved message templates which are being pushed to consumers through registered telemarketers and TSPs using DLT platforms.

The regulator said that the framework has resulted in substantial reduction of customer complaints to the extent of 60 per cent for the registered telemarketers. However, non-registered pesky callers continue to spam mobile subscribers.

Trai said that it has further taken an initiative to form a Joint Committee of Regulators (JCOR) comprising Reserve Bank of India, Securities & Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) and Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) to frame a joint action plan to curb financial frauds using telecom resources.

"In the recent meeting of JCOR held on November 10, 2022, which was attended by the representatives of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) also, measures to curb the UCC further were deliberated in detail," Trai said.