Unwanted phone calls to end by 15 November, says TRAI chief
01 Nov 2010
Mobile phone users who have been complaining ad nauseam about unwanted marketing calls have been extended fresh hope of relief, as Telecom Authority of India chairman H S Sharma on Sunday held out a deadline of 15 November for regulation to end such unsolicited calls.
"We have finished the entire process of consultations. We are in the process of finalising the regulation for unsolicited calls and messaging. We wanted to do it by the end of October but there is slight delay. We may be out with regulation before 15 November," Sharma told media persons on the sidelines of a book release function in New Delhi.
He said the contents of the proposed regulation could not be disclosed at this moment, but it would "solve" the problem. He added that the telecom regulator has been testing the technicalities of the proposed regulation in some telecom circles.
The Department of Telecommunications had to face embarrassment when finance minister Pranab Mukherjee got an unsolicited call from a telemarketing company earlier this month.
TRAI's earlier attempts to curb the menace did not yield desired results. The 'do-not-call registry' introduced three years ago by the telecom regulator proved ineffective for various reasons.
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