Hardening its stand against telemarketers who violate guidelines, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has decided to impose a hefty penalty of up to Rs 2.5 lakh if they call a mobile subscriber registered for not receiving commercial calls.
The penalty is a staggering 250 times the earlier maximum stipulated penalty of Rs 1,000. The minimum penalty is only Rs 500.
Under the revised guidelines released today, a telemarketer will be fined Rs 25,000 for a first offence, rising progressively to Rs 2.5 lakh for a sixth offence, following which its number will be blocked by all service providers, Trai said. The new regulat-ions will be effective from January 1.
Telemarketers will also be issued a series of 70 numbers to help subscribers recognise commercial calls. Similarly, a unique SMS header has also been mandated for easy identification of commercial SMSs. No commercial communication, even for unregistered customers, will be permitted between 9 pm and 9 am, the regulator said.
| TOUGH CALL |
| * Telemarketers to be allotted ‘70’ number series |
| * For violation of guidelines, penalty of Rs 25,000-Rs 2.5 lakh on telemarketers |
| * No commercial calls/SMSs from 9 pm-9 am |
| * Service providers not to offer packs over 100 SMSs per day to unregistered telemarketer |
| * Customer registration to be done in seven days |
| * Customers to choose from fully blocked and partially blocked categories |
| * Regulations effective January 1, 2011 |
| * Subscribers registered in NDCR need not registered again |
| * Telemarketers to register again with DoT |
Subscribers already registered with the National Do Not Call Registry will not be required to register again. Streamlining the registration system, customer registration will now be effective within seven days, compared with the current 45 days.
A new option is the ability of a subscriber to choose the degree of call filtering, based on categories of interest. The categories are: banking & financial products, real estate, education, health, consumer goods, automobiles, communication & entertainment, tourism and leisure.
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Telemarketers currently registered with the department of telecommunications need to register themselves again. In a bid to crack down on unregistered telemarketers, the regulator has stipulated that no service provider may provide packages containing more than 100 SMSs a day.
To register complaints, a customer can call 1909. A complaint can also be registered via SMS.
Transactional messages such as those from banks, insurance companies, telecom service providers, airlines and railways are excluded from the new restrictions. Transactional messages will, however, only be in the form of SMS and restricted to relevant information. Promotional content in transactional messages will not be permitted.