08 August 2024

On August 8, 2024, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) convened a meeting with the Chief Regulatory Officers of major telecom service providers (TSPs) to address critical issues in the telecom sector. The meeting, which did not include representatives from MTNL and Reliance Communications Limited, focused on combating spam calls from entities using PRI/SIP lines for bulk communications, migrating telemarketers and enterprises to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform, ensuring message traceability through Entity and Telemarketer Chain Binding, and whitelisting URLs to prevent the delivery of messages containing malicious links. 

Key decisions included the disconnection and blacklisting of entities that misuse their SIP/PRI lines for spam, with a shared blacklist across all TSPs for up to two years, during which no new resources will be allocated to them. Starting September 1, 2024, any message containing non-whitelisted URLs or APKs will be blocked. Additionally, TSPs are required to complete the technical implementation for message traceability by October 31, 2024. TRAI stressed the urgency of addressing spam calls and received commitments from TSPs to fully support and implement these directives within the specified timelines.