JOIN USDisconnection for pesky calls, SMSes
In a bid to combat the menace of pesky calls and SMSes, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has decided that telecom facilities given to a subscriber would be immediately disconnected if it is being used for sending unsolicited communication.
Name and address of such subscribers shall be entered into a blacklist and no resources would be allotted to these subscribers for a period of two years in such cases, Trai Member R K Arnold said.
Amending the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2013, the Trai on Friday said in case of a valid complaint, the telecom operator shall disconnect all the telecom resources allotted to such a subscriber, after due investigation.
The provision comes into force with immediate effect.
“The moment a complaint is received by a service provider from a customer... it will immediately investigate into that complaint and if it finds the communication unsolicited, the regulations provides for immediate disconnection of that resource,” Arnold said.
Trai said it has introduced the measures to further strengthen the framework for controlling unregistered telemarketers. “...there are many private persons who are sending the commercial messages to the subscribers...now with this particular amendment...resources of such subscribers will be disconnected,” Arnold said.
Meanwhile, the regulator has amended the Telecom Commercial Customer Preference Regulations, 2010, which prescribes a transactional charge of 5 paisa per transactional SMS, which will come into effect from June 1. At present, only the promotional messages are charged.
“The 5 paisa charge is already there for promotional messages. Now, it will be applicable for transactional messages also, which falls under the category of commercial communications,” Arnold said.
Also, the Trai has said it has introduced the Short Message Services (SMS) Termination Charges Regulations, 2013, which prescribes a termination charge of 2 paisa per SMS. The regulations would come into effect from June 1.
SMS termination charges are payable by originating telecom operator to the terminating operator for each SMS terminated by it on its network.
The regulation said, “...the authority has prescribed cost based SMS termination charge of 2 paisa per SMS,” keeping in view the observation of TDSAT that SMS termination charges should be cost-based and on work done principle.
This is in order to “create certainty in the market”, counter “exigencies created by certain dominant players and to protect the interests of the consumers,” it added.