DoT releases norms to check telemarketers

The department of telecommunications (DoT) today issued guidelines for telemarketers to check unsolicited calls.

The guidelines make it mandatory for telemarketers to register themselves with the department.

In the wake of widespread public resentment against such calls, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), after consultation with the DoT and the Reserve Bank of India, had yesterday released the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007.

The guidelines propose a compulsory registration fee of Rs 1,000. The registration will be valid for 10 years and a telemarketer can surrender his registration by giving a 30-day notice.

A telemarketer is allowed to have multiple registrations but interconnection between different telemarketing centres has not been permitted. The transfer of registration is allowed only after the DoT's consent.

The guidelines, expected to keep check on 60,000 telemarketers, define telemarketing as "transmission of any message through telecommunication services for the purpose of informing about, or soliciting, or promoting any commercial transaction in relation to goods, investment or services".

In order to prevent piracy or use of resources from the grey market, the DoT has mandated that telemarketers obtain their telecommunication resources from licenced service providers.

These also give exclusive rights to the DoT or the agency authorised by it to inspect and suspend the registration of a telemarketer in public interest or national security.

Registration can also be terminated if a telemarketer fails to comply with the prescribed provisions.

The telemarketer will have to furnish documents, accounts, call-data records of all the specified calls by a certain period of time or as and when demanded by the security agencies.

Further, the guidelines also ask the telemarketers to take appropriate measures to prevent objectionable, obscene, unauthorised or any other content, messages or communication, infringing copyright or intellectual property rights and take immediate steps to prevent such material whenever reported by the enforcement agencies.