DoT seeks to check promotion on phone

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is set to issue guidelines for telemarketers in order to check unsolicited commercial calls.

While confirming this, official sources said the DoT has had consultations with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on the issue.

In the wake of widespread public resentment against such calls, Trai had formulated the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations (TUCCR) last month.

They could not be implemented then because specific issues like telebanking, services by access providers and e-governance, which were out of the regulator's domain, had to be discussed with the Ministry of Information Technology and Communication and the Reserve Bank of India. However, the issues plaguing the implementation of the regulations have now been taken care of.

It is learnt that the guidelines propose to differentiate between telemarketers and other service providers "" entities providing application services like telebanking, teletrading, e-commerce, call centres, among others.

Like the other service providers, it will be mandatory for all telemarketers to register themselves with the DoT.

The guidelines, expected to keep a check on the activities of the 60,000 telemarketers across the country, have defined '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".

The guidelines propose a compulsory registration fee for all telemarketers of Rs 1,000, the same amount levied on OSPs. The registration will be valid for 10 years.

In order to prevent piracy or use of grey market resources, the DoT is likely to propose that all telemarketers should obtain their telecommunication resources from licensed telecom service providers only.

The set of norms also gives 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 could also be terminated if the telemarketer fails to comply with the prescribed provisions.

The telemarketer will have to furnish 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.