Despite the hoopla, the ‘National Do Not Call Registry’ (NDNC) set up by the Government has managed to enthuse only a mere 5 per cent of the total telephone subscriber base in its first year of functioning.
According to the latest report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), only around 18 million telephone subscribers out of the total subscriber base of more than 344 million (mobile as well as fixed line subscribers) who have opted to register in the National Do Not Call Registry.
The NDNC was established after growing consumer complaints that they were getting unsolicited calls from marketing companies which was impinging on their privacy.
The NDNC, that was set up last year, is a data base of telephone numbers of those subscribers who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial calls, or wanted telemarketing calls. “Measure like this are not something that people proactively adopt, therefore there is a need to spread better awareness of this option as well as setting up better deterrents in case of abuse or neglect of this scheme,” says telecom analyst, Mahesh Uppal.
Out of these registered subscribers, urban areas like Delhi and Mumbai constitute around 40 per cent along with states like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa. “There is a lack of awareness about NDNC in the country due to which this level of NDNC penetration is low. Besides the telemarketers, operators also have vested interests not to promote this in a big way, however they have to realise that this will cause harm in the long run and is not the best way of building customer loyalty,” says Uppal.
TRAI is however upbeat about the success that the NDNC has witnessed over the past year. The regulator claims that complaints of non-compliance were received by only 0.44 per cent of the total registered subscribers. Of the total 18 million subscribers that are registered in the past six months around 81,000 complaints were received by various service providers.
Of these more than 79,000 complaints have been addressed and around 1,600 complaints are still pending, said TRAI.
TRAI data also shows that till now over 10,000 telephones of the telemarketers have been disconnected on account of repeated violation of the regulation. Out of these, 8602 disconnections are of those telemarketers who are not registered with the DOT. Further, 8,543 telemarketers have been fined Rs 500 and 2,801 telemarketers have been fined Rs 1,000 for violation of NDNC rules.
Analysts opine that the penalty should be more stringent for the regulation to be taken more seriously. “There is a lot of abuse of people’s number, the penalties are minor, the deterrent therefore is not enough,” says Uppal. “It is definitely a good step in the right direction, but it is not enough,” he adds.
The NDNC was set up under the “Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007” issued by TRAI and has come into operation from 12 October 2007. All the registered telemarketers before making marketing calls are required to submit the list of telephone numbers which they want to call for telemarketing purpose to the NDNC.
