The dispute between the department of telecommunications (
DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (
Trai) over issuing of separate landline numbers for telemarketers is unlikely to be resolved immediately, as what the latter claims.
A top DoT official said on Monday that it would take time for it to upgrade its exchanges across India for issuing a separate new series of ten digit numbers starting with the digits 140 to telemarketing companies for using the landline phones. "If we allow the new series now without making necessary changes in our exchanges, it would be a security threat to our network." said the DoT official.
But the chairman of the Trai, J. S. Sarma said he has been assured by the higher-ups that the issue would be sorted out soon. "My understanding is that in the next 15 days the matter would be sorted out with the DoT and it would take another three weeks for the operators to tune-up their networks accordingly," Sarma told Mail Today . DoT officials argue that it will be difficult for security agencies to track calls as it will display uniform code instead of the STD code for connections across India besides creating more capacity in each exchange as telemarketers are not present everywhere.
At present, a landline call can be identified based on the STD code, which differ from exchange to exchange within a city. "Any person with ill intention can misuse the network. He can plug into a network manually. It is not financially viable either and the separate series for telemarketers will impact the numbering system being used at present for allocating new connections," said the official.
Both DoT as well as Trai said they cannot leave it to the operators to make their own arrangements for telemarketing calls.
"People's perception is that we are purposefully delaying unwanted calls and messages from telemarketers, is wrong. People should understand that the government has to facilitate the right kind of infrastructure and they (operators) follow that," said Trai.
Trai has deferred the March 21 deadline for implementing curbs on calls and messages from telemarketers for the fourth time without giving any deadline.
With the continuing dispute with DoT over the issuance of a new number series to telemarketing firms, it is unlikely that subscribers would get an early reprieve from pesky calls.
Telecom operators have also been pushing for deferring the regulations regarding telemarketers as the operators have their commitments with the latter.
According to Trai, there were a total of 29,108 registered telemarketers in India as on January 14 this year. There were also some 75,121 unregistered telemarketers in India as on September 30 last year. Bulk messages and unwanted messages is a business segment worth over Rs 335 crore in India with over 16,800 crore bulk messages being sent to mobile users every year. Of this over 12,000 crore messages are sent by Tata Teleservices alone (71 per cent market share).
Courtesy: Mail Today 
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