TRAI takes stiff stand, imposes hefty fines

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has come forward again for the rescue of mobile users, who has registered its number under the National Do Not Call (NDNC) registry, but despite getting incoherent unsolicited phone calls, now can take a sigh of relief.

The TRAI on Wednesday proposed to impose a fine up to Rs 20,000 per calls on telecom provider for not obeying its directive regarding unsolicited telemarketing calls and text messages.

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To enhance the effectiveness of its regulation by providing some financial sanctions, TRAI has again amended the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007 which states that if any telecom service provider does not comply with provisions of the Regulations, it would be fined up to Rs 5000 for the first instance and Rs 20,000 for every subsequent instance.

On the other side under TRAI also proposes fine from the registered telemarketers to Rs 500 for the first unsolicited call and would be doubled to Rs 1,000 for the subsequent unsolicited call.

After exploring that its earlier directive was not being seriously implemented, the TRAI had to take such a strong measure as it has received thousands of complaints from subscribers about the non-effectiveness of Do-Not-Call.

The ineffectiveness of regulation discouraged new cellular subscribers from registration to NDNC.

The data revealed by the TRAI states that where as 5 million subscribers had joined the directory in the first five days of its launch on October 12, since then just half of the subscribers have signed up.

Service providers are mostly responsible for pesky calls, TRAI blames as about 10,000 telemarketer’s applications to access DNC have been rejected by the telcos after preliminary verification.

While another 3,000 applications are still under process. Besides that not less than thousands of companies are yet to register.

Even these unsolicited phone calls have received the attention of Parliament, Supreme Court, High Courts, the Reserve Bank of India besides a number of consumer calls, TRAI said.

TRAI had established the National Do Not Call registry in October last year, which facilitated the users to avoid receiving any telemarketing call or message after registering. But despite registration some users are still receiving unsolicited calls. As per records 7.5 million phone users and 12,183 telemarketers have got registered so far.