The absence of a unified digital platform makes it unattainable for the telecom operators to verify veracity of consents.. File.
| Photo Credit: S. Siva Saravanan
In order to curb the menace of pesky calls and sms, telecom regulator TRAI has directed service suppliers to develop a unified digital platform in two months to hunt, preserve and revoke clients’ consent for promotional calls and messages.
In the primary section, solely subscribers will be capable to provoke the method to register their consent for receiving promotional calls and sms, and later, enterprise entities will be capable to attain out to clients to hunt their consent to obtain promotional messages, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) stated in an announcement on Saturday.
“TRAI has now issued a direction to all the access providers to develop and deploy the Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) facility for creating a unified platform and process to register customers’ consent digitally across all service providers and principal entities,” TRAI stated.
At current, there is no such thing as a unified system to point out consent of consumers for getting promotional messages.
“Considering the volume of work involved, TRAI has allocated two months time to develop such facilities by all Access Providers and thereafter implement it in a phased manner. This direction has been issued by TRAI under its Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018,” TRAI stated.
Under the prevalent system, consent is obtained and maintained by the varied principal entities akin to banks, different monetary establishments, insurance coverage corporations, buying and selling corporations, enterprise entities, actual property corporations and so on.
The absence of a unified digital platform makes it unattainable for the telecom operators to verify veracity of consents.
“The DCA process shall have facility to seek, maintain and revoke the consent of customers, as per the processes envisaged under TCCCP Regulation 2018. The consent data collected will be shared on the Digital Ledger Platform (DLT) for scrubbing by all access providers,” TRAI stated.
Access suppliers, which embody telecom gamers like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, have been additional directed to make use of a standard brief code beginning with 127 for sending consent in search of messages.
“The purpose, scope of consent and principal entity or brand name shall be mentioned clearly in the consent seeking message sent through the short code,” the assertion stated.
Only whitelisted or authorized internet or app hyperlinks, callback numbers and so on might be allowed for use within the consent in search of messages, it stated.
“Further, access providers shall develop an SMS, IVR (interactive voice response), online facility to register unwillingness of the customers to receive any consent seeking messages initiated by any principal entity,” the assertion added.
