Trai's DNC Registry fails to curb spam

Is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Authority of India (Trai) serious about having a filtering mechanism for unsolicited calls and messages or is it under pressure from the telecom lobbies to delay it indefinitely?

This has baffled subscribers who continue to receive calls from telemarketers and other sources despite the existence of a Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registry to fight the menace.

Trai has done little to regulate unsolicited calls and messages throughout last year by changing the National Do-Not-Call (NDNC) Registry to Do-Not-Call Registry. The new Registry, which came into effect early this year, has proved to be of no help to subscribers as they continue to get unsolicited calls despite having registered with it.

Subscribers who were already registered with the National Do-Not-Call Registry too, continue to get unwanted calls and SMSs making the entire exercise and the government's tall claim futile.

According to Trai's revised guidelines, in case of violations telemarketers would have to pay a fine of Rs 25,000 for the first offense and up to Rs 2.50 lakh if the telemarketing companies continue to violate the norms. These firms can also be blacklisted. On August 12 last year, Trai had organised an open house discussion on the issue with various stakeholders. However, telecom operators virtually sabotaged and hijacked the discussions at the meet, leaving no chance for consumers to put across their views.

Leading telecom operators Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL), Loop Mobile, Vodafone and Idea, among others, have been protesting against regulating unsolicited calls and messages. Therefore, despite the new regulations, subscribers are not very hopeful of seeing the telemarketers deterred. According to Colonel (retd) S. N. Aggarwal, a Delhi- based consumer activist, any action is yet to be seen.

Unsolicited commercial calls and SMSs are one of the major issues of concern for telecom subscribers and has become an irritant for mobile phone users across the country. This has resulted in a large number of complaints.

According to telecom analyst Dilip Sahay, the IT Amendment Act, 2008 does not have provisions to deal with telemarketers. "Telemarketing and selfregulation do not go together," he explained.

As per 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 Rs 335-crore market 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 TTSL alone, which has a 71 per cent market share. The other biggies in the bulk SMS market are Loop Mobile (ex BPL) 14 per cent and BSNL 13 per cent. Vodafone, Airtel, Idea and others hold the remaining two per cent.

Courtesy: Mail Today