The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on February 16, 2023, issued Directions to Access Providers to stop the misuse of Headers and Message Templates, and to curb unauthorized promotions using telecom resources under TCCCPR-2018.
TRAI has observed that Headers and Message Templates of Principal Entities (PEs) are being misused by some Telemarketers. To stop the same, Access Service Providers have been directed to-
•reverify all registered Headers & Message Templates on the DLT platform and block all unverified Headers and Message Templates within 30 and 60 days respectively.
•ensure that temporary Headers are deactivated immediately after the time duration for which such headers were created.
•ensure that content variables in Message Template do not have the flexibility to insert undesired content. Entities involved in message transmission should be clearly identifiable and tracked if required.
•remove confusion among recipients of messages and prevent their misuse, no Look-alike headers (Headers that are similar by virtue of the combination of the small case or large case letters) are to be registered by Access Providers in the names of different Principal Entities.
To curb messages from unauthorized or unregistered telemarketers, including telemarketers using telephone numbers, Access providers have been directed to-
•bar all Telemarketers, who are not registered on Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) platform from handling the message template scrubbing and delivery of messages to recipients through the Access Providers' network.
•ensure that promotional messages are not transmitted by Unregistered Telemarketers or Telemarketers using telephone numbers (10 digits numbers).
•take action against all such erring Telemarketers as per the provisions of the regulations and also initiate actions as per relevant legal laws. The Access Service Provider shall also notify details of such Telemarketers to other Access Providers, who shall, in turn, bar these entities from sending any kind of commercial communications through their networks.
All the Telecom Service Providers have been directed to comply with the above directions within thirty days.
[Notification No. 12 /2023]
