As per the new regulation, effective from January, 2011, telemarketers cannot disturb phone subscribers with calls and messages between 9pm and 9am.
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s annoyance over a pesky marketing call he got in August while he was in a meeting with opposition leaders has woken up the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from its deep slumber. On Wednesday, TRAI issued a regulation that promises to block unsolicited commercial calls and SMSes.
As per the new regulation, effective from January, 2011, telemarketers cannot disturb phone subscribers with calls and messages between 9pm and 9am. Around 700 million phone subscribers in the country will also be able to identify marketing calls easily as their numbers will start with 70.
TRAI won’t spare erring companies. Telemarketers would have to pay Rs25,000 as penalty for the first offence. The amount increases to Rs2.5 lakh for the sixth one. After that, they can be blacklisted and subsequently disconnected from their resources for two years. Following complaints from subscribers to the service providers or TRAI over violations, action would be taken against the telemarketer within seven days.
Subscribers can either fully or partially block unsolicited calls.
Partial blocking would mean the SMSes would continue. For SMSes too, one can choose among seven categories — banking/insurance/credit card, real estate, education, health, consumer goods and automobiles, communication/broadcast/entertainment/IT, and tourism/leisure.
Registration for blocking calls and/or SMSes will be done in seven days for phone subscribers, as opposed to 45 days earlier. One has to just call or SMS 1909. However, those already registered under the do-not-call registry will be treated as those opting to fully block unsolicited marketing communication. They won’t have to re-apply.
TRAI has, however, pointed out that transactional messages would be allowed to continue. For instance, banks can continue to send messages to their customers about account information, etc., but not on anything connected to promotional activities.
Similarly, railways and airline operators too can send service messages to their customers.
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