Trai extends deadline on traceability mandate to December 1

New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has granted a one-month extension to December 1 to implement the traceability mandate for commercial messages, including one-time passwords (OTPs), which is critical to preventing misuse, including spam and phishing.

The regulator’s move came after telcos warned of massive disruptions from November 1, if operators start blocking messages which don’t allow their origin to be traced, saying most telemarketers and business entities like banks are not yet technically prepared for the new rules.

As per the revised deadline, messages not conforming to the traceability mandate will be blocked from December 1, as against the earlier deadline of November 1.


Mobile phone operators had told Trai that messages containing OTPs and other critical activities may not be delivered as telemarketers (TM) and principal entities (PEs) such as banks and other financial institutions were yet to implement the technical solution.

In India, 1.5-1.7 billion commercial messages are sent every day, as per industry data, underscoring the extent of the disruption if messages are blocked or undelivered.

The carriers told the regulator that to ensure minimum disruption and to avoid any inconvenience to consumers, they would send daily reports to telemarketers and PEs to enable them to take corrective measures. Telcos would go live with the blocking mode by December 1.

Acceding to the request from telcos, Trai said in a statement that to provide a transition time for awareness, technical upgrades, and chain declaration, it has directed telcos to ensure PE-TM chain declaration by all entities at the earliest. Those who default on the chain binding should be issued a warning by respective operators on a daily basis until November 30, 2024.

“With effect from December 1, 2024, any traffic (messages) where the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match with a pre-defined chain shall be rejected,” Trai said.

This is the second time that the regulator has granted an extension to the industry to implement a mandate relating to curtailing spam. Earlier, the regulator had extended the deadline for whitelisting of messages containing URLs and OTT links etc by a month till October 1, after telcos requested more time to set up the systems. Post the extension, the systems are working fine with most of the PEs and telemarketers coming on board, say officials familiar with the matter.

Whitelisting means entities sending commercial messages must provide all information related to URLs, call-back numbers etc., to telcos who will then feed the information to their blockchain-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. If the information matches, the message is passed, otherwise, it is blocked.

Trai has been taking several initiatives to curb misuse of headers and content templates for ensuring a more secure and efficient telecom ecosystem.

As part of Trai’s mandate to curb spam, over 800 entities/individuals have been blacklisted, and more than 18 lakh mobile numbers/telecom resources have been disconnected, which is a significant step towards cleansing the systems of commercial calls.

With effect from October 1, 2024, telemarketing calls starting with the 140xx numbering series have been migrated to the blockchain-based DLT platform for strict monitoring and control.