Telecom Regulation – Effectively Blocking the Pesky Calls

You are in the midst of an important meeting, and your mobile rings. The display shows a number that you do not recognize. You don’t want to pick up the call. But it could be important, perhaps from your child’s school. You excuse yourself, pick up the call and say hello. Good Morning Sir (or Madam), I am calling from the XYZ Bank and we have an excellent scheme….you get frustrated and angry, call the caller names, threaten the caller not to call again, and say you would sue them, and disconnect the call.

Back to the meeting, you are still seething with anger, and not at your best for a while. This can happen in your home city, or travelling with in India or even when travelling abroad. And pay huge roaming charges for these unsolicited calls. If you happen to be travelling to the US, you could even be woken up with these calls due to the time difference. Sounds familiar? There is hardly anyone amongst us who has not faced such a situation almost on a daily basis!

See the Times of India, page 5 of October 23, 2008 (Delhi Edition). Even a Delhi High Court Judge is frustrated about pesky (unwanted) calls. See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Delhi/HC_to_ICICI_Bank_Face_the_music_for_making_unsolicited_calls_/articleshow/3629951.cms.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) launched the launched the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations in 2007 which was then amended in 2008. This provided a facility to the mobile users to register themselves in the ‘National Do Not Call Register’. Marketing companies are supposed to keep checking this database and update their records so that they do not call these people.

The TRAI website gives data of how many people have registered, how many times marketing companies are using this data, etc. It also gives procedure of how complaints can be filed, process for enquiry, etc. However, there is no data about how many complaints have been filed. What happened to these? Was any penal action taken on anyone? You can see more details at http://www.TRAI.gov.in/TRAI/upload/Regulations/73/regulation17mar08.pdf.

However, the calls keep coming! Everyone who I know is still getting these calls. And most of these folks have registered themselves on the above ‘National Do Not Call Register’.

Who wants to get rid of unwanted calls?

The marketing companies? Obviously not, they are looking for business. So what if someone is getting disturbed, or already has a credit card or insurance from the same company that is calling now!

The TRAI? Yes, but they seem to be helpless beyond creating the regulation. It is just too messy and prolonged affair to register complaints, process them or impose any penalty, if at all it can be imposed. The penalties mentioned in the regulation do not seem to be any significant deterrent anyway.

The mobile companies? Of course not. They generate revenue from these calls. If they are lucky, they can collect roaming charges too. The telecalling companies are big institutional customers for them. They must be having high level account managers for them!

The mobile users? Yes of course! But other than registering on the ‘Register’ or getting angry on the callers, what else can they do?

There are two objectives of this article:

1. Send email to TRAI. Say that you are still getting unsolicited calls. As them to do more. Their email addresses are trai@trai.gov.in and trai@del2.vsnl.net.in.

2. Both these email addresses given on TRAI website bounced today! So please print this article and send it by post to them: THE TELECOM REGULATORY AUTHORITY OF INDIA, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan (next to Zakir Hussain College), Jawaharlal Nehru Marg (Old Minto Road), New Delhi - 110 002.

3. Forward them the url of this blog. Because this article is suggesting a way in which these calls can be stopped in a big way.

A New Solution to Stop those Unsolicited Calls

TRAI enacts a new regulation that requires mobile operators to implement ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’ feature on their telephone system.


This is how the ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’ feature would work.

i. When you get an unsolicited call, you press a pre-determined sequence, say #007 on your phone.

ii. As soon as this sequence is entered, the telephone system recognizes that this is an unsolicited call, and it creates a log in the system which notes the telephone number of the caller, and other details.

iii. As soon as the telephone system sees enough evidence of unsolicited calls from a telephone number, they send an automatic warning to the user, asking them to stop. And inform TARI simultaneously (say through a shared database).

iv. Even after this, if the caller persists (you will know because more people would be pressing #007), then TRAI automatically refers this to the Consumer Court, which will automatically impose a significant fine, say Rs 25,000 on the caller.

v. If the caller (the company whose employees are making the unsolicited calls, and not the employees) is caught in a situation of being referred to the consumer court a 2^nd time, the fine could be higher, say Rs 50,000. For the 3^rd offence, it could be Rs 100,000. And after this, imprisonment of of 1 day for the promoter or managing director or proprietor.

vi. Even a simpler solution could be that once a caller is identified as unsolicited caller, then the service to that number is automatically stopped. The next step could be to stop services to all telephones registered to the caller. And share this data to all other mobile operators so that no one provides service to such a caller.

This system would work because it is efficient and effective. All evidence (call records) is automatically being collected. There can be no mistake. Courts do not even need ‘hearing’ as everything is fool proof. No one can drag their feet because it would hurt their business.

It would also work because it works in the internet world. There was a lot of spam earlier. But with efficient solutions like ‘Stop Unsolicited Calls’, the spam has reduced significantly. When you receive email or invitations on email, if you click ‘This is Spam’, then it ‘hurts’ the person who sent such an invitation. There is still some spam, but relatively low. The same thing can happen here too.

This is possible technically. The solution would perhaps be simpler than implementing ‘Number Portability’ across mobile operators. This regulation is already enacted, and would be available in India with in a few months.

But who will ensure that something like this gets taken up?

YOU. Act NOW. Renowned spiritual leader, H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who started Art of Living says that we usually postpone good deeds (e.g., making a donation to for a noble cause). But do not wait for doing things that are not so good (have you ever postponed getting angry:)

It is simple – (1) Write to TRAI and request them to help stop the spam – send them this article – you can easily email it from this blog, (2) Forward this article to as many people as you know and ask them to do the same (3) You can also request TRAI to fix their email address :)

Lets Make A Difference. Lets (be) M.A.D. Lets stop the Mobile Spam.

Why don’t you share your comments here too? What else can we do for the mobile spam?