October 12 will mark your independence from pestering telemarketers, as the much-awaited National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry, containing numbers of all consumers that have sought immunity from the menace,  is ready and will come into effect from that day.

Of course, the day will mean anything to you only if you had registered your phone numbers with the NDNC Registry before August 31 – and over 65 lakh subscribers have already done so.

For those who did the registration through their respective service providers at dates after that or are in the process of doing so, their numbers will become immune to telemarketing calls after 45 days of registration.

“No telemarketer will call the subscribers who are registered with NDNC,” says the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), according to whose data more than 65 lakh subscribers have registered themselves with the NDNC registry through their respective telecom service providers.

According to the provisions of the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007, issued by TRAI on June 5, telecom service providers will impose a fine of Rs 500 per call or disconnect their lines if any telemarketer calls subscribers listed on the NDNC Registry.

“Therefore, all the telemarketers who have registered with DoT are required to scrub their calling list from 12th October 2007 from NDNC website,” TRAI says.

The regulator has, meanwhile, clarified that only subscribers who are registered with NDNC will be governed by the TRAI Regulation. “Those subscribers who have individually registered themselves with banks, credit card companies and other such agencies for do not call registry are not included in the above dispensation,” it says.

So far about 8,000 telemarketers have been issued provisional registration which would allow them for accessing the NDNC for scrubbing their calling list.

The telemarketers who have not registered themselves have been advised by TRAI to get themselves registered with DoT immediately. “It is reiterated that those telemarketers who have not registered are not supposed to make any unsolicited commercial call to a subscriber registered on NDNC, otherwise they will be liable for action as per the Regulation on receipt of any complaint,” TRAI said in an advisory.