Spam Calls, Policy Initiatives, Regulatory Challenges, and the Road Ahead

Context

Recently, the Department of Telecommunications has reportedly decided to take up the issue of spam calls and messages as a priority area once the new government is formed.

Rise of Spam Calls

• Addressing Pesky Calls: Part of the Prime Minister’s 100-day agenda, addressing pesky calls/messages is crucial for enhancing ease of living and doing business, key indicators for development.
• Long Standing Battle Against Spam: The endeavor to curb unsolicited communication, known as spam, is not new. The government has long grappled with this issue through regulations such as the “Do Not Disturb Registry” and various versions  of unsolicited commercial communications laws.

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Challenges in Containing Spam

• Failure in containing Spam: But the rising instances of spam calls and messages show the efforts to contain them, even by using blockchain and artificial intelligence, have failed.
• Regulation Challenge: One of the reasons why efforts to check spam have not been effective is that the attacker (creator of spam, usually a telemarketing company) moves faster than the regulator
• Inadequate Enforcement of Telecom Regulations: Some telecom-service providers are not in compliance with the codes of practice but they are hardly penalised. 
  • In principle, the penalty on service providers for failing to curb pesky calls and SMSes on their network is Rs 34.99 crore — this was reiterated in a Parliament reply last year. 
  • After many variations across years, the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations were issued in 2018, followed by six directions by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)
• Consent and Telemarketer Registration: According to the regulations which came into force in February 2019, seeking customer consent for receiving promotional messages and registration of telemarketers is mandatory. 

Status of Spam Calls

• India Leads Global Spam Market: India is not alone in this but the country’s spam market is on a high. Truecaller, which has 400 million monthly users around the world, said last week that India continued to remain its largest market, accounting for 74.2 percent of its net sales in the first quarter of the calendar year 2024.
  • India contributed Rs 244.2 crore to Truecaller’s operating revenue in the quarter, up 8.8 per cent year-on-year. 
  • On the operational front, the Swedish company’s average number of global monthly active users rose by 39 million to 383.4 million. Of this total, 272.6 million were from India alone.
• Global Spam Call Trends: Truecaller, which identifies and warns the user about scammers and telemarketers, gave a glimpse into the global scenario in a recent report, highlighting that US residents had to struggle with an average of 2.1 billion spam calls on a monthly basis.

Way Forward

• Calling-Name Display Service: One of the recommendations of Trai is that all network operators should implement the calling-name display service on mobile phones and that all smartphone makers should be mandated to enable this feature within a stipulated time.
  • Calling-name presentation, or CNAP, has to be formalised through guidelines.
• Proposed Measures to Combat Spam: A new inter-ministerial panel is being proposed to check spam, there will be updates to the Chakshu portal, and the mandatory implementation of artificial intelligence-based digital consent-acquisition technology will come into play.
• Transactional Call Number Series: A separate numbering series can also be planned for transactional versus marketing calls. 

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Conclusion

As India continues to lead the global spam market, concerted efforts from policymakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders are imperative to effectively combat spam and safeguard the interests of citizens and businesses alike.