TRAI directs telcos to act against spam callers
Telecom operators have been mandated to take action against pesky callers or spammers flagged by their AI-based caller ID system — even without the need for consumers filing complaints, a Trai notification has said.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has notified the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2026 (05 of 2026), which mandate telecom operators to restart KYC of senders identified as spammers and take action against violators by disconnecting the phone connection and even filing a complaint against it with law enforcement agencies.
According to the notification published on Monday, every telecom operator receiving an incoming call flagged as “suspected spam” by its artificial intelligence or machine learning-enabled system will have to share details of such calls with telecom operators (originating access providers) from whose network the call has originated within two hours of such identification.
The originating access providers (OAP) shall, within one business day of the receipt of the flagged calls, identify unique KYC identifiers of the sender associated with such calls and share those details with other telecom operators.
All telecom operators within one day will need to check within their system if there are other connections within their network linked to the suspected spammer in the last 10 days.
“If it is found that five or more CLIs (called line identification) of the Sender have been so identified within the last ten days, all the OAPs concerned shall take action against the Sender,” the notification said.
In case of the first violation triggered using AI system, outgoing services of all telecom resources, including allotted to the sender shall be barred by all the telecom operators for a period of 15 days, irrespective of whether those telecom resources were actually used or not in making such communications.
“For subsequent instances of violations, (i) all telecom resources, including PRI/SIP trunks, SIMs etc. of the Sender shall be disconnected by all the Access Providers for one year, irrespective of whether those telecom resources were actually used or not in making such communications,” the notification said.
The telecom operators or the OAP will have to put the sender under the blacklist category during the period of one year and no new telecom resources shall be provided by any telecom operator to the violator.
However, the violator will still be provided with one telephone number with outgoing services barred. The telephone connection will be allowed to connect with notified emergency outgoing services.
The notification bars all call management applications or similar services like Truecaller from tagging, blocking or filter incoming calls originating from any number series designated by the authority like those starting with 1600 or the central government for commercial and government communication.
Consumers will have the freedom to filter or block any calls on their own devices, at their personal discretion for their own purpose. The amended rule allows the Terminating Access Provider (TAP) to charge the OAP up to Rs 0.05 (five paisa only) per minute (on a per-minute pulse basis), for A2P calls.
Under the amended rule, subscribers opting to block telemarketing calls from all categories will need to text the BLOCK PROMO code to 1909.
“BLOCK PROMO option shall block only promotional types of Commercial Communications for all categories of content, mode, time band and day types but shall not block transaction and service type of Commercial Communications and Government Communications,” the notification said.
“All preferences registered under FULLY BLOCK category under present rule will be migrated to BLOCK PROMO category within fifteen days of the notification,” it added.
The amended rule will be effective after one month of the gazette notification but in phases over 60-90 days. The norms related to A2P calling will come into effect after 60 days.
Part of the notified regulation around the appeal mechanism through a blockchain technology layer, corroboration of complaints with data of AI-flagged suspected high-probability UCC senders, and suspension of services of the sender for wrong categorisation of the content templates will come into effect after 90 days.
