This can easily be termed the most consumer-oriented regulation in telecom services. On June 5, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) issued regulations to curb unwanted commercial calls, which have become a menace. By September 5, the National Do-Not-Call directory (NDNC) will be in place and there will not be any unsolicited commercial calls. An unsolicited commercial call has been defined as “any message, through telecommunications services, which is transmitted for the purpose of informing about, or soliciting or promoting any commercial transaction in relation to goods, investments or services which a subscriber opts not to receive. Trai chairman Nripendra Misra deserves all the credit for voluntarily moving in to curb the nuisance when he received complaints from harassed customers. He initiated the process of bringing out a regulation, in November 2006, through a consultation paper. There were two challenges before the regulator — one, to curb the nuisance of unwanted calls without stopping telemarketing activities and two, to convince the department of telecommunications (DoT) to modify telecom licences so that action can be taken against those telemarketers who violate the regulations. Within seven months of initiating the process, the regulations are in place and in another three months customers will completely get rid of unsolicited calls. At present, banks and financial institutions use the services of direct sales agents for marketing financial tools. The banking industry accounts for about 90 per cent of unsolicited calls. There are about 30,000 direct sales agents appointed by banks and they are not covered by any rules or regulations as they do not have a licence from any government authority. Under the new norms, all telemarketers will have to register with DoT and follow the rules and regulations. There would be an NDNC consisting of the list of telephone numbers of subscribers who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial communications (UCCs) — both voice and SMS. the NDNC will be installed, operated and maintained by the National Informatics Center (NIC) by September 5. Telephone subscribers who do not wish to receive UCCs can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider for inclusion in the NDNC. The telemarketer will have to verify their calling telephone numbers list with the NDNC registry before making any call. This will also help telemarketers as they will not waste their money and time on those subscribers who are not receptive to their calls. Telemarketer will also be required to register with the NDNC to avail the facility of scrubbing their calling list. Those telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered with NDNC will be required to pay a fine of Rs 500 per call. The defaulter telemarketer will face disconnection of telecom service. In countries like the USA, the UK and Australia, where DNC lists are strictly maintained, violators have to pay huge fines. In the USA, the fines are up to $1,100 per call. Recently, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined cable TV provider DirectTV $5.3 million for violating the do-not-call list. The proposed Australian Do-Not-Call Act provides for fines of up to A$1,100 for violation of the act. Entities who regularly violate the act may have to pay fines of up to A$1.1 million. When the US regulator was formulating rules for telemarketers, it gathered information that about 17 billion telemarketing calls were completed in a year. The US had a fixed line telephone base of 270 million. By that standard, there should be about 10 billion telemarketing calls on a base of 170 million phones. Now, the challenge before the regulator is to ensure that the new regulation is implemented by all telecom operators. There should be enough consumer awareness programmes to make customers aware of their rights. Only then would the Trai initiative be successful. No More Nuisance November 20, 2006 Trai initiates consultation paper on ‘Unsolicited Commercial Calls’ April 23, 2007 Issues draft regulations June 5, 2007 Issues regulations to curb unsolicited commercial calls September 5, 2007 NDNC to be installed by National Informatics Center
