The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has tapped global telecom operators to curb the menace of spam and fraudulent calls from international numbers, Trai chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti told FE on Monday.
The same assumes significance amid increase in international spoofed calls and incidents of digital arrest for users, thereby resulting in financial frauds.
“There are international calls being made for spam as well as for fraud particularly, where international calling lines are being used. So, Trai is taking this issue with regulators from other countries to understand how scamsters are misusing the international calling facility and measures to prevent those,” Lahoti said on the sidelines of the 25th meeting of the South Asian Telecommunication Regulators’ Council (SATRC-25).
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“Every country is facing this issue and a collaborative approach is needed for its resolution,” Lahoti added.
The three-day meeting in New Delhi is being attended by heads of telecom regulators from Afghanistan, Maldives, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Islamic Republic of Iran.
The department of telecommunications (DoT), along with telecom operators has also introduced a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls before they can reach Indian telecom subscribers. The system to block such calls is being deployed in two phases. First, at the telco level, to prevent calls spoofed with phone numbers of their own subscribers. Second, at a central level, to stop calls spoofed with the numbers of subscribers from other telecom operators.
Lately, Trai has directed telcos to disconnect all telecom resources of unregistered telemarketers found making spam calls, and to blacklist them for up to two years. The regulator has also introduced SMS whitelisting norms wherein commercial messages containing URLs, OTT links and APKs (Android application packages) should be whitelisted before sending to consumers.
“Telcos have started blacklisting the unregistered telemarketers and implemented the whitelisting of URLs, and the technical challenges are sorted out,” Lahoti said.
On the reason for SMS traceability provision, which will come into effect from December 1, Lahoti said, “a lot of telemarketers were misusing the subscriber data to push spam and this was detected in our audits. Therefore, we found it was necessary that the principal entity (PE)-telemarketers (TMs) chain binding has to be done with every message so that the originator of SMS can be traced”.
According to Lahoti, the technical implementation has been done by telcos, process has started to register the chain binding, and telcos have also started daily reporting regarding messages complying to or failing to comply with the chain-binding process.
In response to Trai’s multiple directions on curbing spam communications, over 800 entities/individuals have been blacklisted, and more than 1.8 million mobile numbers have been disconnected so far.
Trai is also soon expected to finalise the updated Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR-2018) to curb spam calls and messages. In the new regulations, the regulator is looking at regulating tariffs for SMS and voice calls beyond a certain limit, to curb unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) from unregistered telemarketers using 10-digit numbers.