Trai to issue guidelines on unsolicited calls soon

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will soon issue guidelines to address the problem of unsolicited mobile calls and SMSs.

"We have held consultation on that (unsolicited calls and messaging). We issued consultation paper also and held open house discussion. We are finalising our regulation on unsolicited commercial communication. It should be out during the course of this month. We will issue guidelines," Dr J S Sharma, Trai chairman told media persons here today.

The department of Telecommunications had to face embarrassing situation recently when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee himself got an unsolicited call form a telemarketing company.

A Raja, union minister for telecommunications and IT immediately instructed the ministry to take steps against such calls that "encroach" into the privacy of telecom consumers.

TraiI's earlier attempts to curb the menace, did not yield any results.

The Do-Not-Call registry introduced three years ago by the telecom regulator proved ineffective for various reasons.

"It is true it did not work (do not call registry). We are looking at that. I do not want to give any points at this stage. We have to strengthen the do not call registry so that it is efficient and effective. Wait for few days. By the end of this month we will have necessary regulation in the place," Sharma said on the sidelines of a discussion on the consultation paper on national broadband plan.

Replying to a question on the blackberry issue, he said Trai was not consulted on the issue.

Speaking on the Broadband Plan, he said TRAI has projected that by 2014, the country will have one billion mobile subscribers.

The idea is that "we will be able to reach broadband connections to everybody, including all the 220 million basic telephony subscribers," Sharma said.