Initiating steps to implement its decision, DoT has sent a reference to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) seeking recommendations on the framework for regulating telemarketers through an authorisation mechanism, officials in the know told ET, asking not to be named.
Since Trai is already undertaking a consultation process on the spam issue, and has received comments from all stakeholders, it is expected to come out with a supplementary paper and aim to give the recommendations together, the officials added. “As per DoT, telemarketers should be brought under the authorisation category. In the reference, DoT has asked Trai to recommend the framework for authorisation,” one of the officials said.
Once telemarketers are brought under some regulatory, or authorisation, framework, they can be held accountable for controlling spam along with telecom operators and will be liable to face consequences, said experts. Currently, these entities are not under any regulations that would hold them responsible for the nuisance of pesky messages and calls, which are also at the heart of numerous instances of financial fraud.
As per current rules, Trai levies financial penalties on telcos for spam messages and calls on their networks. Telcos have commercial binding agreements with telemarketers and, as per Trai, operators should recover the penalty amount from telemarketers. But the system is not working as telemarketers keep changing operators. Also, telcos can’t enforce any conditions on them. Hence, carriers say they get penalised for cases where they don’t have any control. As per data shared by telcos with Trai, commercial traffic originates from about 280,000 business enterprises, which is then aggregated by about 16,000 aggregator telemarketers (TM-A) and these TM-As deliver the SMS traffic to about 15 delivery telemarketers (TM-D).
These 15 TM-D are connected to every carrier and hand over the entire commercial traffic. The carriers say they are completely dependent on these 15 TM-D and have no visibility of the entire message delivery chain — like from where a message has originated and who has aggregated it. As a result, telcos have proposed to the regulator that telemarketers and business entities be equally held accountable and financial penalties be levied on those who send spam. The operators had raised the issue of telemarketers in their recent meeting with communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. DoT has agreed with their point of view, following which the reference to Trai was sent, officials said
