95% Indians continue to get unwanted calls daily despite regulatory interventions: Survey

India’s struggle with pesky calls is escalating, despite interventions from regulators like the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). A new survey highlights the growing nuisance, revealing that 95 per cent of mobile users now receive unwanted calls daily. This marks a worrying increase from 90 per cent just six months ago.

A nationwide survey conducted by LocalCircles paints a grim picture of the situation:

• Frequency of pesky calls: A staggering 77 per cent of those surveyed report receiving three or more pesky calls every day. The overall percentage of people getting these calls has jumped to 95 per cent, showing that the problem is far from being under control.
• Ineffectiveness of the DND list: The “Do Not Disturb” (DND) list, meant to protect consumers from such calls, seems ineffective. A whopping 96 per cent of those who registered on the DND list said they still receive unwanted calls, up from 90 per cent six months ago.
• Sources of the calls: The majority of these calls come from the financial services and real estate sectors. About 88 per cent of respondents identified these industries as the primary sources of their nuisance calls. Calls from the financial sector alone have surged from 54 per cent to 66 per cent over the past six months.

TRAI and the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) have taken several steps to curb this issue, but the impact has been limited:

• Higher Tariffs Proposal: TRAI has proposed introducing higher tariffs for calls and SMS beyond a certain daily limit, aiming to make commercial communications through 10-digit numbers unviable for unregistered telemarketers. However, this approach has yet to show results.

• Strict Scrutiny of Telemarketers: TRAI has also suggested that telecom subscribers making over 50 calls or sending 50 SMS per day should be monitored as potential pesky callers. Telecom operators have been instructed to disconnect the services of businesses misusing bulk connections for spam calls.

 • Blacklisting and Service Disconnection: TRAI has directed telecom operators to disconnect all services of entities found to be making spam calls and to share this information across networks to prevent reactivation of services. Despite these efforts, the effectiveness remains questionable as the problem continues to grow.

According to the report, one of the reasons behind the surge in pesky calls is the outsourcing of lead generation by companies to contractors who often use personal mobile numbers to make these calls. This practice makes it difficult for regulators to track and control the origin of the calls.

To address this, experts suggest that regulators could enforce stricter accountability on the companies benefiting from these leads. Additionally, there is a proposal for telecom operators to implement a system where users can flag pesky callers. If a number receives too many complaints, it could be suspended or blacklisted, potentially linked to the caller’s Aadhaar information to prevent them from acquiring new SIM cards