DO NOT CALL US (PLEASE!)
Unsolicited Commercial Communications – National Do Not Call Registry
Keeping in view the continuous complaints from credit card subscribers and the observations of the High Court of Delhi in the context of a Public Interest Litigation, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is in the process of taking certain national level initiatives to address the various issues relating to Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC). As part of these measures, TRAI has framed The Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications(UCC) Regulations 2007 for curbing UCC.
The Regulation envisages that all the telecom service providers would set up a mechanism to receive requests from subscribers who do not want to receive UCC and for this purpose they will maintain and operate a Private Do Not Call List. The Private Do Not Call List will include telephone numbers and other details of all such subscribers. The telephone numbers and area code from this Private Do Not Call List will be updated online by the operators to a National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) which will be maintained by National Informatics Centre (NIC) and thus the NDNC will have the telephone numbers of all the subscribers all over India who have opted not to receive any UCC. Telemarketers will have to register in the NDNC Registry. The telemarketers would submit online the calling list to the NDNC Registry where the list will be modified/scrubbed by excluding the numbers listed in the registry and the modified/scrubbed list will be online transferred back to the telemarketers for making calls. The Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications(UCC) Regulations, 2007 has since been notified in the Gazette on June 6, 2007.
For the effective implementation of the UCC Regulations, TRAI has mandated that the telemarketers have to register themselves with the DoT, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India within three months of the issue of the guidelines for Telemarketers by DoT, failing which their telecom services may face disconnection. The Telecom Service Providers have been directed to disconnect the telephone connections provided to the telemarketers in case of violation of the UCC Regulations by them.