The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) under the Ministry of Communications on Thursday issued directions to check misuse of Headers and Message Templates of Principal Entities (PEs) by some Telemarketers and to ensure that all promotional messages are sent through Registered Telemarketers (RTMs).

The TRAI is alarmed at the rise of pesky mobile calls and messages. It has issued directions to mobile operators under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997.

As per the directions, the mobile operators have been directed to reverify all registered Headers & Message Templates on DLT platform and block all unverified Headers and Message Templates within 30 and 60 days respectively.

They will ensure that temporary Headers are deactivated immediately after the time duration for which such headers were created and that content variables in Message Template do not have flexibility to insert undesired contents.

The access service providers have to ensure that promotional messages are not transmitted by Unregistered Telemarketers or Telemarketers using telephone numbers (10 digits numbers); and act against all such erring Telemarketers as per the provisions of the regulations and will initiate actions as per relevant legal laws.

The Access Service Provider shall also notify details of such Telemarketers to other Access Providers, who shall, in turn, bar these entities from sending any kind of commercial communications through their networks. All Telecom Service Providers have been directed to comply with the directions within 30 days.

Entities involved in message transmission should be clearly identifiable and tracked, if required. The directions want removal of confusions among recipients of message and prevent their misuse, no look-alike headers (Headers which are similar by virtue of combination of small case or large case letters) are to be registered by Access Providers in names of different Principal Entities.

To curb messages from unauthorised or unregistered telemarketers, including telemarketers using telephone numbers, Access providers have been directed to bar all Telemarketers, who are not registered on Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) platform from handling the message template scrubbing and delivery of messages to recipients through Access Providers’ network.