TRAI gives 30-day deadline to telcos to check misuse of telemarketing message templates

Regulator Trai on Friday asked telecom operators to take steps to prevent misuse of telemarketing message templates within 30 days to curb annoying messages.

The designer said it has noticed some telemarketers misusing company titles and content templates.

Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) is a major source of public nuisance and a violation of individual privacy and Trai has taken various measures to curb it. Trai has today issued a directive to stop misuse of message templates under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018),” the regulator said.

Authorized telemarketing messages display headers that identify the company from which the message came, instead of cell phone numbers.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked telecom operators to amend the TCCCPR 2018 Codes of Practice (CoPs) on telemarketing message headers and content templates and comply with the guidelines within 30 days.

The regulator said similar message headers or headers cause confusion among message recipients and are misused by some parties for their own gain.

Trai said that the number of variables in the model is not defined in the CoPs, which leads to their misuse, and in addition, the ad content is passed in the variable parts of the content models.

“…to minimize said abuse, the number of variables allowed in the content model must be limited so that PEs (Principal Entities) not only give enough flexibility to express their content, but also have reasonable restrictions. on the number and placement of variables,” the regulator said.

Trai has asked telecom operators to re-verify all headers registered on blockchain-based messaging platforms within 30 days and block unverified headers.

It has asked telecom operators to come up with a system within 60 days to temporarily disable all titles that have not been used for 30 days.

Telecom operators must create an online process to reactivate message headers and ensure that each header is separate.

Train’s guidelines require telecom operators to re-verify all content models within 60 days and block unverified models.

Telecom operators must include procedures for the quarterly review of headers and content models in their respective CoPs in accordance with the Train guidelines.

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