The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday announced that the national do not call (NDNC) registry is ready and will be operational from October 12 for subscribers who have registered before August 31, 2007. 

TRAI said subscribers registered after August 31, 2007 will get the benefits of the NDNC after a period of 45-days. With this, the telecom ministry's new initiative of blocking unsolicited telemarketing calls will become active from next week, even as 65 lakh users have registered for blocking spam calls. Subscribers also can continue registering for the service, while it would take around 45 days for this mechanism to come to effect, it said. As per the regulation, the telecom service providers will have the right to charge Rs 500 or disconnect telemarketers’ lines, if they are found to be violating the rules.

So far around 8,000 telemarketers have been issued provisional registration that allows them to access the NDNC registry and avoid calling subscribers registered with it. 

The TRAI had issued ‘Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007’, on June 5, 2007, for putting in place a mechanism for curbing unwanted telemarketing calls.

Meanwhile, over 65 lakh subscribers have registered with the NDNC through their telecom service providers as on October 1.

Aircel has received over 54,959 do not call applications, while that of BPL stood at 58,706, BSNL 1,57,489, Bharti AirTel 30,97,974, HFCL 28,730 and Idea 822,387. 

State-owned telecom major MTNL received 43,996 applications, while that of Reliance stood at 2,01,162, Spice at 1,03,447, Tata Teleservices 3,32,609 and Vodafone at 16,19,863.