TRAI armour against pesky calls!

The latest weapon in the war against pesky calls is going to be a separate number series, which, will allow the receiver to understand the true nature of the call with a mere glance, The Economic Times has stated in a report. TRAI, the telecom regulator is going to issue a directive to earmark a separate series that companies can use to make calls for commercial purposes, popularly known as pesky calls.

As things stand now, only 140 number series are earmarked for all kinds of commercial purposes. According to the report, there would more than one such series. The number 140 can be reserved for marketing calls and 160 or 161 can be deployed to make service calls. The receiver of the call can easily realise the objective of the caller just by looking at the number.

Incidentally, TRAI has already made recommendations to network operators and handset manufacturers to allow display of caller’s name for personal phone numbers as well as enterprise callers.

“The DoT has approved our recommendation to allocate separate series which have been tested for both purposes…TRAI shall soon issue a direction in this regard,” the newspaper quoted an anonymous TRAI official as saying.

According to the regulatory agency official SMS have become relatively infrequent after telecom companies have begun deploying blockchain-based filtering system. “While SMS complaints have come down to just 30,000 per month, reports against unwanted calls through 10-digit personal numbers have gone up to a few lakhs,” he said.

He also said that companies have started deploying personal numbers to make business calls after more and more receivers began ignoring calls from the 140 series thinking these would be spam.

“Even banks were unable to fulfil transaction verification calls because subscribers would simply ignore 140 numbers. They had to ultimately resort to other private unregistered SIMs,” the official added.

This led to altogether unwanted fallouts. Fraudsters started using personal SIMs to dupe the common man by claiming that they were bonafide representatives of banks. The official argued this is one of the chief reasons to go for a clear demarcation of service calls.

TRAI data reveal that 305,587 entities have registered for sending commercial SMSes and calls. But the basket is far bigger since many businesses deploy 10-digit numbers to place telemarketing calls.

The representative of a company said that it is very easy for companies to get hold of SIM cards since 10 SIM cards can be legally issued to each identity. Therefore, many companies don’t take the pain of marketing calls. This executive also argued that race among telecom companies has triggered such a frenzy to acquire customers that KYC compliance often takes a backseat.

Incidentally, the government appears determined to contain pesky calls and in February DoT launched two portals ‘Chakshu’ and the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP).