Two-Year Ban for Unregistered Telemarketers in India

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken decisive action to combat nuisance calls and fraud. On August 13th, the authorities ordered telecom operators to block calls from unregistered telemarketers and deny them access to networks for up to two years.

This decision is expected to significantly reduce the volume of spam calls and improve the consumer experience. As many sources of spam and fraudulent calls target both the domestic Indian market and foreign countries, there may be a global improvement in the situation.

According to the directive, when a telecom operator blocks a telemarketer for violating the rules, it must share this information with other operators within 24 hours via a dedicated platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). The companies then have 24 hours to disconnect all telephone lines or services provided to the spammer. This ensures that the violator cannot continue their activities simply by switching to another operator.

TRAI has set a one-month deadline for transferring violator data to the DLT platform. Afterward, operators have a week to submit a compliance report to the regulator. Additionally, all providers are required to submit updated lists of blocked numbers twice a month.

The measures may seem stringent, but in reality, a telemarketer is given three chances before being permanently blocked. The first violation results in a warning, while the second leads to a six-month restriction on the use of services.

Operators themselves decide whether a caller is violating Indian anti-fraud and spam regulations based on complaints received. Moreover, companies are required to establish their systems for handling user grievances.

TRAI was compelled to take this step following a sharp increase in complaints over the past 18 months. In 2023, 1.2 million complaints were received against unregistered telemarketers, and in the first half of 2024, nearly 790,000.

Previously implemented measures to address this issue yielded unsatisfactory results. One reason providers failed to eliminate nuisance calls was that they disconnected only one number at a time, rather than depriving the violator of all resources. In the past, telemarketers could easily circumvent any block by simply switching to another telecom operator.

TRAI also hopes that the new rules will help curb fraudsters. The regulator introduced a blockchain-based offender list to manage the registry of known wrongdoers, hoping to reduce the scale of the problem. However, this method encountered some difficulties, including issues with one-time login codes, and it did not ensure the registration of all relevant organizations.

Nevertheless, from the beginning of 2021 to the end of 2022, the number of complaints within India decreased by 60 percent. While this is a significant improvement, TRAI deemed it insufficient and announced in November 2022 the implementation of artificial intelligence to address the problem.

Unfortunately, there is no information yet on the results and effectiveness of AI. However, the new measures adopted by TRAI demonstrate the regulator’s determination, which could serve as an example for other countries.