What are UTMs, and how to report telemarketing spam callers in India

Despite activating DND (Do Not Disturb), there is very little use, as spam calls and messages are still flooding the phones every day in India.

Who are these people, you ask? Well, they are unregistered telemarketer (UTM) companies. They use regular SIM cards with 10-digit phone numbers and misuse them to send the annoying texts and even worse make calls, disturbing work at the office meetings.

In 2025, more than 4,100 crore spams calls was recorded in India. By using normal SIMs, UTM bypass regulatory safeguards, making them harder to trace and control.

So to put an end to the menace, state-run Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has come up with an initiative that requires citizens' cooperation.

All you have to do is download and install the official TRAI DND app. It is available on Google Play and the Apple App Store for Android and iOS, respectively.

Whenever you get those irritating calls or messages, just copy and paste the phone numbers to the DND app and report them to TRAI.

It should be noted that those registered telemarketers make calls using 140 series numbers and SMS through headers (e.g. AB-CDEFGHI-P ). And, the financial entities such as ICICI, State Bank of India, HDFC and others make service/transactional calls (like alerts, verification) using 1600 series numbers.

TRAI DND app's user interface.

So, be attentive when reporting an unauthorised call. As noted earlier, these fraudsters use regular phone numbers to make marketing calls and messages. Report them to TRAI on the DND app.

In 2025, TRAI disconnected 1,84,482 UTM connections. Interested users can install the app on Google Play Store (for Android, here) and Apple App Store (for iPhone, here).

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