Telcos, banks review interface to record, review and revoke consent for receiving commercial calls, messages

Telecom companies and banks are developing a simple interface for consumers to record, review and revoke their consents for receiving commercial calls and messages.

“A major pilot project is underway to enhance consumer control over commercial communications by replacing unverifiable, offline consents for commercial communication with a secure digital consent framework,” the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a release on Tuesday.

“The new mechanism will enable the consumers to digitally register, review, and revoke consents through a simple, unified and tamper-proof interface,” it said.


The consent management module is the most critical piece for TRAI’s regulation of preventing spam SMSes and calls. After years of delays in implementation, TRAI recently revamped the digital consent platform to address the challenges.

The ongoing pilot includes telecom service providers and major banks such as SBI, PNB, ICICI, HDFC, Axis Bank, Canara Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, and is coordinated by telecom and banking regulators. Four dedicated working groups will oversee technical, operational, and awareness-building aspects of the pilot, it said.

Besides, TRAI also stressed on fast-tracking the migration of commercial calls on the newly introduced 1600-numbering series. “Considering different scales of operation of entities, it was agreed that migration may be made in a phased manner based on the inputs provided by the sectoral regulators to TRAI,” it said.

TRAI is also working with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), DoT's Digital Intelligence Platform, and telecom operators’ blockchain systems to enable real-time sharing of fraud and spam data.

Mobile payments regulator NPCI has also joined the efforts of this joint committee in preventing fraud.