Describing unsolicited telemarketing calls as a “nuisance” to phone users, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday notified a regulation ensuring imposition of financial penalty on service providers facilitating such calls.

The “Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) (Amendment) Regulations 2008”, will come into force from the date of its publication in the gazette notification.

“The objective is to increase the effectiveness of compliance of these regulations by providing financial disincentive to non-compliant telecom service providers and thereby reduce the nuisance and inconvenience to the subscribers of telephone/mobile services from the unsolicited telemarketing calls/messages,” TRAI said. The Authority has already set up the National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry, operational since October 2007, and held meetings with the service providers to ensure effective implementation of the regulations.

Till date, more than 8.3 million phone users have registered for ‘Do Not Call’ in the NDNC Registry, while about 13,600 telemarketers have got themselves registered with the Department of Telecommunication.

The NDNC is being accessed daily by around 600 telemarketers for scrubbing their calling list, and out of approximately 1,522 million numbers uploaded by the telemarketers for scrubbing, 1,411 million have been cleared by NDNC for calling.

“The telemarketing calls have engaged the attention of our Parliament, the Supreme Court of India, the High Court of Delhi and the Reserve Bank of India. Besides there have also been a number of consumer representations made to the Authority about telemarketing calls,” TRAI said, explaining the imposition of financial disincentive as an additional effective deterrent to non-compliance of regulations had become a necessity.
TRAI has decided to make the service provider liable to pay a fine of up to Rs 5,000 for the first non-compliance with the regulations and up to Rs 20,000 in the case of second or subsequent such non-compliance.

To discourage registered telemarketers from sending Unsolicited Commercial Communications, the Telecommunication Tariff Order 1999 is  also being amended to enable imposition of a Rs 500 fine —  as tariff for each unsolicited call for every first unsolicited commercial communication — and Rs 1,000 for every subsequent call. A complaint  would have to be made by the subscriber provider within 15 days of the receipt of such communication.