The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) plan to give businesses a new set of phone numbers for service-related commercial calls that are not for promotional reasons has received approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The purpose is to make it easier for subscribers to discern between legitimate business calls and promotional calls.
At the moment, customers don’t even answer calls from their banks, which may be for service-related information or support, or from product servicing businesses due to an increase in spam and fraudulent calls.
According to officials, the phone number series will be given to major entities (companies like banks) in accordance with their needs, for which TRAI will soon release instructions. At the time of the call, the new series will be shown on phone screens and serve as an identification for them.
At present, there is no distinction between businesses providing services and those making a sales pitch for purely commercial reasons when it comes to the “140” number series, which telemarketing companies have been given access to.
In the meantime, TRAI has allowed telecom providers and other important organisations more time to put its prior directives to limit the abuse of headers and message templates into practice. The regulator has not yet said anything in this regard, but authorities have stated that compliance will take at least two to three weeks. They stated that it is a continuing process and that the regulator will hold another meeting with operators the following week to assess the status.
TRAI instructed telcos to block any unneeded and unverified headers and templates within 30 and 60 days, respectively, in February. According to the injunction, telecoms have until April 16 to follow the instructions. The majority of spam and fraudulent messages come from banks and financial organisations, who have been slow to follow instructions. They experienced a delay as a result of activity associated with the fiscal year’s close. They had requested time till the end of April.
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