 "New 160 number series for service calls to reduce spam, says Trai")
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday said the new 160 number series will reduce spam and ensure customers do not miss out on important service and transactional calls.
In a meeting with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), and more than 25 banks and other financial institutions on Friday, TRAI discussed the burgeoning problem of spam and ways to tackle it, officials said.
So far, numbers in the 140 series have been allocated for all commercial purposes. These could be classified further into (140) marketing and (160 or 161) for service calls to easily identify the purpose of the call in the future.
In the first stage, it has been earmarked for all entities regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irdai) and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). "Once it is implemented, it shall help in the easy identification of the calling entity and will prevent the duping of innocent citizens by fraudsters," TRAI said.
It was also discussed that the operation of the 140 series, at present being used for promotional purposes, is being migrated to the DLT platform and scrubbing of digital consent is also being operationalised. "With the implementation of the above two measures, substantial control on spam calls from 10-digit numbers is expected," TRAI said.
Representatives of public and private sector banks, members of the Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI) and all the telecom service providers were present at the meeting.
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DCA push
The Digital Consent Facility (DCA) established by telecom service providers was also discussed in detail at the meeting, TRAI said. The DCA facility enables the acquisition of digital consent of the customer and further enables senders such as banks, insurance companies, and other entities to send promotional communications over SMS and voice to customers irrespective of their DND status.
A unified platform to seek, maintain, and revoke the consent given by customers towards receiving commercial communication from businesses, DCA was brought in to give consumers control over who can message them. However, Trai has repeatedly flagged the slow pace exhibited by operators like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and BSNL in onboarding private businesses onto the system. But the operators have blamed the sluggish response from the industry.
"The role and obligations of senders such as banks, insurance companies, and other entities with respect to TRAI regulations were also deliberated and it was decided to whitelist URLs/Apks in the content templates, use a minimum number of headers and content templates, and take immediate action against the entity/telemarketer in case of misuse of senders’ credentials," TRAI said on Friday.
Till now, there had been no unified system for customers to provide or revoke consent. In the earlier system, customer consent was obtained and maintained by businesses. The problem often starts when these businesses purchase bulk short messaging services (SMS) from a telemarketer to send SMS texts to their clients and customers. As a result, telecom service providers such as Access Providers (APs) could not check the veracity of consent.