War on spam: Trai directs telcos to curb misuse of bulk connections

Internet URLs or APK files which are not whitelisted can't be delivered by texts, TRAI directs

The Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday directed telcos to strictly monitor and disconnect all telecom resources of businesses if they misuse their bulk connections and engage in spam calls.

At a meeting between the regulator and telecom operators, including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and BSNL, TRAI said the service providers should share such information amongst each other and take action.

“If any entity misuses its Session Initiating Protocol (SIP/Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines for making spam calls, all the telecom resources of the entity shall be disconnected by its Telecom Service Provider (TSP) and the entity shall be blacklisted by it,” TRAI said.

SIP and PRI are two methods used by businesses to connect to a regional telephone network. PRI is a telecommunication standard that carries voice and data transmissions between a network and a user. It uses physical copper wires to digitally connect businesses with the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

On the other hand, SIP connects IP PBX, a telecommunication device that provides voice connectivity to desk phones within a building, to the internet, thereby allowing businesses to make and receive calls over the internet.

“This information shall be shared by the TSP with all other TSPs who will, in turn, disconnect all the telecom resources given by them to that entity and blacklist it for a period of up to two years. No new telecom resources shall be allocated to it by any TSP during the period of blacklisting,” TRAI said.

Texts under scanner

Telcos have also been asked to ensure that they enable a system to ensure the traceability of the message flow by October 31.

The meeting also saw the parties decide that no message containing Uniform Resource Locator (URLs) and Android Application Package (APKs) that are not whitelisted, shall be allowed to be delivered from September 1. 

URL is essentially the link for a website, or the address of a unique resource on the internet. An APK is an executable file that contains all the data needed to install and run an Android App.

The decision is expected to have a major impact on curbing spam, and potential frauds given that many users unknowingly click on links which act as phishing tools for data hackers.