Trai seeks help from RBI, sectoral regulators to push via anti-spam process

The new Digital Consent Acquisition process allows consumers to consent to receive commercial texts, calls

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has reached out to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and other sectoral regulators to push entities, including banks, businesses and insurance companies, to register for the Trai’s Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) process, officials said.

The move comes after only a few businesses registered for DCA, which was first mandated in June, 2023 to rein in exponentially rising cases of spam and excessive tele-calling in the country.

DCA is a unified platform to seek, maintain and revoke the consent given by customers towards receiving commercial communication from businesses. It further enables senders such as banks, insurance companies and other entities, called 'Principal Entities' (PEs) to send promotional communications over SMS and voice to customers irrespective of their DND status.

In recent meetings with the regulators, Trai has brought up the issue, officials said. “For the PEs not on board, the matter has been taken up with concerned regulators, including RBI and  Sebi, and the consumer affairs ministry,” a top Trai official said.

"For SMS, the DCA is already running, but no entity has come on board. We are meeting and pursuing PEs to come on board," another official said.

To enhance message traceability, Trai has mandated that the Trail of all messages from senders to recipients must be traceable from November 1. Any message with an undefined or mismatched telemarketer chain will be rejected.

Meanwhile, Trai had mandated telcos to migrate telemarketing calls starting with 140 series to online DLT platform latest by September 30 for better monitoring and control.

“For voice calls, we are taking stock of the compliance. Many businesses are yet to respond. But going forward, the issue should get solved,” the official stressed.

Till now, there has been no unified system for customers to provide or revoke consent. In the earlier system, customer consent was obtained and maintained by businesses. The problem often starts when these businesses purchase bulk short messaging services (SMS) from a telemarketer to send SMS texts to its clients and customers. As a result, telecom service providers such as access providers (APs), could not check the veracity of consent.

Trai had earlier flagged the slow pace exhibited by operators like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and BSNL in onboarding private businesses onto the system. However, the operators have blamed sluggish response from the industry.

 

Trai Push

 

- Few businesses have adopted Trai's DCA process, 17 months after launch
 

- All SMS must be traceable by November 1, or face rejection
 

- Telcos must move telemarketing calls to DLT platform by September 30
 

- Operators blame businesses for sluggish adoption of the system