You might soon find some comfort if you are sick of getting unwanted calls and texts from random numbers. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will introduce new regulations on May 1, 2023, to fight these unwanted communication calls.
All telecom firms would be required to implement AI spam filters in their call and SMS services under the new regulations. The Indian telecom regulator, TRAI, has taken a significant step to safeguard customers against fraud and abuse.
The New Regulation By TRAI
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Media sources state that the new regulations issued by TRAI mandate the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) spam filters for call and SMS services by telecom providers like Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea, and BSNL.
These filters will recognize and stop phony and promotional calls and texts coming from different sources, which are frequently used by con artists to con people out of their money. The intention is to combat the rising instances of spam and the annoyance these calls and texts cause clients.
No Spamming
Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio are two of the telecom behemoths that have agreed to adopt the AI filter service in accordance with the mandate. This has been officially confirmed by Airtel, and Jio is slated to begin offering the service shortly.
TRAI met with service providers including Bharti Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea (VIL) earlier in February to examine the issue with the UCC detection mechanism.
“Today we have made it very clear that telcos have to come out with an integrated system of stopping fraud (calls and messages),” the TRAI stated during the meeting. Although they are working, more needs to be done.
“Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) violates people’s privacy and is a major cause of annoyance for the general public. On July 19, 2018, TRAI published the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (hence, “TCCCPR, 2018”), which established a framework for managing UCC.
The rules went into effect on February 28, 2019. An ecosystem based on blockchain (Distributed Ledger Technology-DLT) has been built with its implementation in a co-regulatory manner with support from all Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), according to a press release issued earlier by TRAI.
New Rule In Effect From Today
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From May 1, voice calls will also use the blockchain-based DLT system that is currently used for spam messages, according to a previous report by Outlook.
The TRAI monitored the telecoms’ adherence to its guidelines for removing headers and content templates and advised them to take immediate action to avoid obtrusive calls and texts. The telecom firms would ask primary entities (PEs), including banks, financial institutions (FIs), and others, to remove any unnecessary headers and templates throughout the deployment.
In addition, TRAI requested that banks, FIs, and other PEs send SMS messages immediately to do this and clean up headers and templates; if they do not, the regulator will be forced to block their messages in DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology).