Spam no more: Govt to soon finalise draft rules on unwanted business calls, messages

The meeting was chaired by Secretary, DoCA, Nidhi Khare, and attended by representatives from Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory of India (TRAI), Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Vodafone, Reliance and Airtel.

“The draft guidelines define various important terms, applicability with appropriate illustrations and provide that the guidelines shall not be in derogation of any other law. The draft guidelines also list out various types of communication that will be deemed to be unsolicited/ unwarranted communication,” the official cited above said.

“Various suggestions were received by the committee members on these aspects. Based on these suggestions, the department (DoCA) will soon finalise the Guidelines for Unsolicited and Unwarranted Business Communication, 2024,” the official added.

The draft was prepared by a subgroup of the committee, which was set up by DoCA in February. According to officials, during several meetings, there was “general consensus” among the committee members that unwarranted commercial communication was “a huge cause of concern and needed to be dealt with proactively”.

“It was further pointed out that despite numerous measures taken by TRAI and the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), the number of pesky and fraudulent calls remain unabated,” an official said.

Earlier this year, TRAI recommended all telcos activate caller name display on phones. It also asked smartphone makers to enable this feature.

At the meeting, the official said, it was also brought to the notice of the committee that TRAI, under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, had already advised ‘principal entities’ such as banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and trading companies to develop and deploy a Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system.

The DCA system aims to create a unified platform for subscribers to register their consent digitally for receiving commercial communications. The consent can also be revoked.

“Secretary DoCA appreciated the various steps being undertaken by different regulators and also suggested to promote robust inter-ministerial/ departmental communication and cooperation so that the interest of the consumers could be duly protected under the mandate of Consumer Protection Act, 2019,” the official said.