TRAI pursues mechanism to stop unwanted calls
15 Jun 2010
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday it has extended the last date for receiving comments from stakeholders on regulations for unsolicited calls to 18 June.
The TRAI had released a consultation paper on 'Review of telecom unsolicited commercial communications regulations' on 11 May to discuss the issue with all the stakeholders.
"Some stakeholders have requested for more time to send in their comments. In view of this, the authority has decided to extend the last date for submission of written comments by all stakeholders up to 18 June," TRAI said in a statement.
Unsolicited commercial calls / SMSes is one of the major issues of concern for telecom consumers, and results in a large number of complaints. To tackle the problem of such unsolicited calls, TRAI had initiated a consultation process in 2006. The recommendations were sent to the DoT, and based on these, the national do-not-call (NDNC) registry was established in 2007.
On paper, telephone subscribers not willing to receive commercial communications can register their number with the NDNC; but it has clearly proved to be ineffective in practice.
As per the regulations, every operator has to set up a mechanism for registering a request of mobile subscribers for not receiving unsolicited commercial calls and update it with the NDNC register, maintained centrally by NIC. In spite of various measures, consumers still face a lot of problem and to tackle these, a review was called for.