COAI Backs Consumer Affairs Ministry's Draft Guidelines to Curb Pesky Calls

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) The draft guidelines being prepared by the Consumer Affairs Ministry will help tackle the menace of unregistered telemarketers, the apex telecom industry body COAI said on Tuesday.

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) -- whose members include Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone Idea etc -- said the industry body is working closely with the government and regulator to address the issue of unsolicited commercial communications (UCC).

COAI Director General SP Kochhar said the industry body and its members are also part of the committee, formed by the Department of Consumer Affairs to tackle the menace of pesky calls from unregistered telemarketers.

"The Committee is working to prepare draft guidelines under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, to safeguard consumers from unwarranted commercial communications. We believe that these guidelines, once notified, will be helpful in addressing the menace of UCC substantially as it will put a deterrence on the Unregistered Telemarketers," Kocchar said in a statement.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) put in place the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCCPR) in 2018 to address the menace of pesky communications.

TCCCPR introduced blockchain- Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to provide the best possible solution to curb UCC.

"Under TCCCPR, the industry has developed various modules over the DLT framework, which have been reasonably successful considering the noticeable decline in the volume of UCC originating from SMS over the last couple of years. However, UCC from voice calls is still an issue that the Regulator and TSPs are working together to address," Kochhar said.

He also said that telecom operators are currently working on bringing a few more models to address the issue of UCC through voice calls.

"The government has allocated the 140 series for promotional voice calls and has now prescribed the 160 series for transactional and service voice calls. These modules are being worked upon and designed under discussions between all telecom service providers (TSPs) and technology partners and will be implemented by TSPs in coming months," Kochhar said.

COAI said that the Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) framework is an important module developed by the TSPs, wherein PEs like banks, financial institutions, and real estate agencies are required to digitally take explicit consent from the users for sending commercial/business communications.