Telemarketing entities should be regulated to curb spam: Telcos to Trai

Telemarketing entities or resellers of SMS services must be brought under government’s licensing regime to hold them accountable for culprits transmitting spam messages across the delivery value chain, otherwise “this piecemeal approach” will not yield any positive results, telecom companies have argued.

Over 2,80,000 businesses in India send commercial SMSes, which are aggregated by 16,000 telemarketing aggregators. These are then passed on to 15 delivery telemarketers who are connected to every telco to handover entire commercial SMS traffic. Thus, telcos do not have visibility of SMS delivery chain beyond these 15 senders and therefore, cannot control spam, they argue.

“TM-D is clearly a reseller of services and should be either licensed like VNO or should be authorized by DoT under the upcoming authorization regime under Indian Telecommunication Act 2023,” Reliance Jio said in its submission to an ongoing industry consultation on TCCCP Regulations for preventing spam.

Airtel further added that if such a licensing or authorisation is not possible, then direct connectivity between telecom companies and principal entities (business senders) should be mandated.

As per above numbers, such an arrangement can push 16,000 telemarketing entities out of business.

Telcos have once again highlighted that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is ignoring the “parallel spam market” emerging on OTT platforms such as WhatsApp, who are the “chief abettors of fraud by carrying fraud URLs/APKs/CTAs,” Jio said.

“This lack of (uniform) regulation has led to differential treatment for controlling spam between OTT platforms and TSPs,” Airtel said.

On the other hand, to check spam originating from personal numbers, the telecom regulator had asked whether differential tariff for such entities could be a punitive measure to discourage such spammers.

Jio argued that such an “approach is flawed and needs to be revamped towards regulating the real culprit i.e. PE/TM instead of punishing the consumers by differential tariffs.”

Airtel suggested that TRAI can consider measures like shifting costs to initiation attempts rather than termination.

Vodafone Idea supported the Authority’s suggestion but cautioned that the same should be carried out after deeper analysis and careful consideration to prevent larger impact on the genuine consumers.

According to analysis, there were nearly 14 lakh SIMs making between 50-1000 calls per day during the January-March 2024 period, TRAI had said in its consultation paper released in August. Four SIMs were making more than 1000 calls per day! These are likely to be spam callers who disregard TRAI’s norms defined for commercial calling.

Similarly, there were 4 lakh SIMs which were found to send more than 50 SMSes per day. Even though telecom companies have blocked 59k such numbers in calendar years 2022-23, these spammers continue to purchase new SIM cards, TRAI showed.

Among other notable suggestions on the consultation, Truecaller suggested that for spam reporting and complaint handling, TRAI must formally integrate third-party applications into its framework. It also sought that TRAI must clarify the definition of international traffic.