Telecom operators have said that a proposal by the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) of India to display callers’ names could have privacy implications. The proposal, called Caller Name Presentation (CNAP), will also be difficult to execute from a technical perspective given that a number of phones in the Indian market may not be able to support it, telcos have said. Meanwhile, Truecaller, which already offers a similar service albeit through a crowdsourcing model has said since several people purchase SIM cards using forged identity cards, TRAI’s proposal to use SIM registration data to display callers’ names might be fraught with inaccuracies since “the identity of the actual user of a mobile number may not be the same as the subscriber”. Here is an explainer on what the caller name presentation feature entails, why TRAI believes it is needed, and some of the concerns that telcos have raised: What is Caller Name Presentation (CNAP)? In November last year, TRAI floated a consultation paper seeking comments about the potential introduction of CNAP. The feature will allow users to know the identity of the person calling them. The basic idea is that if people are aware of the person who is calling them, they can make an informed choice about those calls. At the same time, such a feature could potentially help in curbing harassment and other spam calls. Currently, there are some applications which offer a similar service, for instance, Truecaller. However, all of them are third-party apps and depend on crowd-sourced data. There is no unifying solution offered by telecom operators. The regulator has proposed four possible methods through which the CNAP feature can be rolled out: - The first model includes telcos managing a CNAP database of their respective subscribers and when its user makes a call to a user on another network, extract their data from the database and present it to the receiving telco’s user. However, telcos will have to upgrade their current “network nodes” to enable this model, TRAI said. - The second model is similar to the first one except that in this case, the operator through which the call is made will permit the receiving operator to access its CNAP database. - In the third model, TRAI has envisaged a third party operating a centralised database. In this case, the receiving operator would be responsible to delve into the centralised database to retrieve and present the caller’s data. - The fourth model would require that each telco retain a copy of a synchronised central database operated by a third party. Telcos seem to be in two minds over the proposed feature, saying that it has both privacy risks and could become a complex technical exercise. They have largely said that the feature should be optional. Concerns have been raised over different aspects. What are the privacy concerns raised by Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea? “Given that handset manufacturers and Operating System (OS) providers have control over the data obtained through the CNAP facility, this could result in the breach of subscriber data privacy as the manufacturers of mobile devices and OS providers would amass subscriber data for the entire country,” the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a trade body representing all the three telcos, said in its submission to TRAI. “This would be the biggest concern related to privacy and confidentiality of the entire country’s subscriber information, which would be akin to building up the name and mobile number database as is in the Aadhaar database, with 3rd parties,” COAI added. In a separate filing, Reliance Jio said that the presentation of a user’s name at the time of calling can “lead to various social and criminal issues”. “It can and will lead to increased social media stalking. Therefore, it is imperative that the consent of the customer is taken before activating CNAP service on his/her device,” Jio said. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), which represents digital industry firms, echoed a similar sentiment and pointed out that women in particular could be the most vulnerable. “The service will display a woman subscriber’s name and data, to every calling party whether or not she consents to it,” the association warned, adding that such “problems are gendered in nature and are likely to occur more for women than men and must be addressed”. Bharti Airtel said that user privacy would have to be balanced while rolling out CNAP, and proposed using predictive analytics to weed out users who misuse personal mobile numbers for commercial purposes. The caller ID system “should be considered only for telemarketer/ commercial users / A2P callers in the initial phase,” the telco said. Vodafone Idea said, “Though CNAP will be a step towards protecting the right of the called party to identify the caller against spamming, it will conflict with the privacy concern of the calling party who may not want to flash his/her name onto the screen of the called party”. And what are the technical challenges? COAI said that a significant obstacle in implementing CNAP would be the fact that time-division multiplexing (TDM) based interconnection between telcos does not support CNAP. Further, there are no standards for CNAP over 2G/3G networks and hence, there is no ready solution available for it. “Even if the solution is developed and deployed, it would require extensive testing before being assured of its proper working. Besides, there are certain legacy nodes in our member network, where it would not be feasible to deploy CNAP,” COAI said. Another major challenge is with regard to handsets as not all handsets are capable of supporting CNAP functionalities. Jio supported this claim, saying that there is no definitive record of feature phones being enabled with the CNAP feature. Further, the smart feature phones working on 4G networks also do not support this feature, it said.
