In order to safeguard consumers from unsolicited promotional calls and messages, TRAI in India has published a consultation paper for public feedback on addressing the issue of UCC. Feedback is being requested on the paper "Review of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018)," which was enacted in February 2019 to tackle the problem.
The consultation paper covers various topics such as defining commercial communications, handling complaints, the UCC detection system and its enforcement, financial penalties, regulations for senders and telemarketers, and reviewing the large volume of voice calls and SMS.
These regulations are designed by the telecom regulator to safeguard consumers from unsolicited promotional calls and messages, while also enabling businesses to send specific communications to customers who have given consent or specified their preferences to receive them. TRAI noted that some issues were noticed while implementing the regulatory frameworks.
This consultation paper is intended to highlight problems noticed during execution that require prompt action. It mentioned that there may be a need to make changes to the rules regarding these issues. The aim of the paper is to gather feedback on ways to enhance the regulations, such as implementing stricter measures against unregistered telemarketers (UTMs) who bother the public with unwanted calls, enhancing complaint resolution procedures, improving the effectiveness of UCC detection systems, imposing stronger financial penalties for breaching regulatory rules, and updating regulations for senders and telemarketers.
TRAI stated that stakeholders are invited to provide comments on the consultation Paper by September 25.
In the meantime, the government is encouraging industry players to safeguard mobile users against spam and fraudulent activities. TRAI emphasized the importance of collaborative efforts among representatives from IRDAI, PFRDA, RBI, SEBI, MoCA, and MeitY in addressing the issue of spam messages and calls during a meeting. The government has observed several instances of misuse of headers and templates. Fraud usually takes place through the transmission of malicious links using the variable parts of the messages.
