The World Opinion

Tag: Telcos

  • TRAI Directs Telcos To Disconnect Unregistered Telemarketers’ Lines Over Spam calls, Blacklist Them |

    New Delhi: Sector regulator TRAI on Tuesday directed telcos to disconnect all telecom resources of unregistered telemarketers found making spam calls, and to blacklist them for up to two years.

    Further, TRAI has asked telcos to comply immediately with its latest directive and submit regular updates on action taken in this regard on a fortnightly basis.

    Issuing its directive to telcos, TRAI said this “decisive action” is expected to significantly reduce spam calls and provide relief to consumers. TRAI in a release said it has issued “directives to access providers to disconnect all telecom resources of unregistered senders for making spam calls and to blacklist such senders under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018” regulations.

    Towards this, TRAI has mandated all access service providers to stop voice promotional calls whether pre-recorded or computer generated or otherwise from all unregistered senders or telemarketers (UTMs) using bulk connections or other telecom resources.

    “… All promotional voice calls from the unregistered Senders/ Unregistered Telemarketer (UTMs) using Telecom Resources (SIP/ PRI/ other telecom resources) shall be stopped immediately,” TRAI said.

    If any unregistered telemarketer or sender is found to be misusing telecom resources for making commercial voice calls in violation of the regulations resulting in consumer complaints, all its telecom resources will be disconnected by the primary telecom service provider for a period up to two years. Further, such unregistered entities will be blacklisted for a period up to two years.

    “…Information regarding blacklisting of the sender shall be shared by the OAP (Originating Access Provider) with all other access providers on DLT platform, within 24 hours, who will, in turn, disconnect all the telecom resources given by them to that sender within the next 24 hours,” TRAI said. New telecom resources would not be allocated to them by any access provider during the period of blacklisting.

    “All the unregistered Senders/ Unregistered Telemarketers (UTMs) using SIP/PRI/ other telecom resources to make commercial voice calls to the citizen shall be migrated to the DLT platform within one month of the issue of this direction and submit compliance report within seven days thereafter,” TRAI said.

    Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed all telcos to comply with its latest directive and submit regular updates on the actions taken on the first and sixteenth of every month.

    The regulator has declared an all-out war against the rising menace of spam calls – last week TRAI had warned that telcos will disconnect the telecom resources of entities that are found misusing bulk connections for making spam calls, and such entities would face blacklisting by all operators for up to two years.

    TRAI held a meeting with regulatory heads of all the Telecom Service Providers last Thursday. The meeting, Chaired by TRAI Chief, was attended by the Chief Regulatory Officers of Airtel, BSNL, Quadrant Televentures Limited (QTL), Reliance Jio, Tata Teleservices Limited, Vodafone Idea Limited and V-CON Mobile & Infra Private Limited.

  • Facing Mobile Network Issue? Soon, Telcos To Pay You Back For Service Outages |

    NEW DELHI: Telecom operators will have to compensate subscribers in case of service outages for more than 24 hours at a district level under the new quality of service rules issued by the sector regulator Trai on Friday. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has also increased the penal amount to Rs 1 lakh from Rs 50,000 for failing to meet each quality benchmark under the new rules.

    The regulator has introduced a graded penalty system of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for different scales of rule violations under revised regulations –“The Standards of Quality of Service of Access (Wirelines and Wireless) and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Service Regulations, 2024”.

    The new norms supersede three different regulations — Quality of Service (QoS) for basic and cellular mobile services, broadband services, and broadband wireless services. In case of a network outage in a district, telecom operators will need to provide a rebate on rent for postpaid customers and extend the validity of connection for pre-paid customers as per the new rules.

    “If any such significant network outage continues for more than 24 hours, the service provider shall provide a proportional rent rebate, as per subscribed tariff offering, for the actual number of days of service outage to postpaid subscribers registered in the affected district(s) in the next billing cycle,” Trai said.

    The regulator will count network outage duration of more than 12 hours in a calendar day as one full day for the calculation of rent rebate or extension of validity. “Rent rebate to postpaid customer or validity extension to prepaid customer, due delay in rectification of faults or due to significant network outage of more than 24 hours, as applicable, shall be made within one week of rectification of significant network outage,” the new norms said.

    However, outages due to natural calamity will not be considered for the extension of validity. Even fixed-line service providers will have to compensate postpaid and prepaid customers if the fault in their network or service is fixed after three days. The new rule mandates broadband service providers to activate 98 per cent of connections within 7 days of customers making payment.

    Mobile service providers will need to provide service-wise (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) geospatial coverage maps on their website that will help users. Trai’s new rules will come into force after six months.