The telecom regulator has tightened the leash on unsolicited commercial calls (UCC), making verifiable customer consent mandatory for calls triggered by enquiries to e-commerce and e-service providers.
Under amendments to the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, a customer’s enquiry can be used to make commercial calls for only seven days. The enquiry must be made in writing or digitally and preserved by the sender in a verifiable form, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Friday.
The regulator has also turned to artificial intelligence and machine learning to crack down on repeat offenders. Telecom service providers already using such systems to detect spam have been asked to identify numbers with a high probability of sending spam and share the information with one another.
If five or more numbers linked to a sender are flagged within 10 days, the sender could face escalating action, including KYC re-verification, physical verification, suspension of outgoing services and, for repeat violations, disconnection.
Trai has also tightened the screws on application-to-person (A2P) calls, including autodialled, robo and pre-recorded or artificial-voice calls.
Entities making A2P calls must declare their use to telecom operators and furnish the calling line identification numbers. Undeclared A2P calls will be treated as unsolicited commercial communication and attract a termination charge of up to 5 paise a minute.
Call-management applications have also been barred from blanket spam-tagging designated commercial number series. Consumers, however, remain free to block or filter individual calls on their devices, Trai said.
