MANU/TRAI/0063/2018

Department/Board : Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

Press Release No. : 58/2018

Date : 29.05.2018

Notification of draft Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, 2018

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today notified draft Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, 2018, that is proposed to curb the problem of Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC). It has been made available on TRAI website at http://trai.gov.in/release-publication/regulation.

2. Unsolicited commercial communication, or spam, is a major nuisance to telecom subscribers. To curb the menace, TRAI established a "Do Not Disturb" registry under regulations made in 2010.

3. Twenty-three crore subscribers have registered themselves on the DND Registry since then. But the problem was not fully contained because unscrupulous elements started obtaining customers' consent, often surreptitiously, or resorted to use of unregistered telemarketers that call or message from a ten-digit number. In more recent times, the incidence of fraud calls has also been on the rise.

4. To overcome these problems, TRAI initiated public consultation by releasing a consultation paper on the subject on 14/09/2017. After considering the written submissions and the inputs received during the Open House Discussion held on 15/12/2017, TRAI has now formulated regulations which leverage technology and offer a more agile process to deal with the dynamic nature of this problem.

5. The problem is addressed in the new regulations by requiring that consent be explicitly recorded by a third party and be activated only after subscribers' confirmation. Furthermore, the subscriber is given the option to revoke his or her consent, if it's abused or is no longer relevant.

6. The business entities are also given the facility to assert their identity through the header directly registered in their name, better control over when and who uses it, and presentation of their brand name during voice calls.

7. Numerous tweaks and new features have been introduced in these regulations, which may appear minor, but which allow subscribers, businesses, telcos and telemarketers to work together to do their work or obtain the results they are looking for, without causing spam to annoy the hapless subscriber.

8. The important new features of this regulation are: