The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) convened a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) on 27 August 2024 to stress the need for a joint effort to tackle the problem of spam messages and calls. The meeting explored ways to ensure a more secure and efficient telecom ecosystem.
The Trai Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti urged the regulators to discuss and enable the implementation of whitelisting of uniform resource locators (URLs), over-the-top (OTT) links and call-back numbers to be sent in sms. The body observed that the fraud takes place through the transmission of malicious links using the variable parts of the messages. As far as the case of misuse of headers and content templates is concerned, it is difficult to find the entity that pushed the traffic.
The authorities noted that many business entities are making commercial voice calls using the Session Initiation Protocol (Sip) or Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines with indicators in violation of the regulations put forward by the regulatory authority. It was observed that these entities should be migrated to the designated 140 series for making promotional calls. The meeting called for taking action on spammers who are making promotional voice or pre-recorded calls using bulk connections or sip.
The meeting discussed leveraging the Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system set up by the service providers to procure digital consent from the consumers. It allows the calls and messages delivery to the recipients despite them having a do-not-disturb (DND) preference. The regulators have been urged to ask the entities to use such facilities.
One of the key issues which the members discussed during the meeting was enhancing the information exchange among the regulators to limit the frauds taking place using the telecom resources. The meeting emphasised the need to exchange the available information with various regulators on platforms for its utilisation for controlling frauds.
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