COAI's Statement On TRAI's Regulations On Unsolicited Commercial Communications

“Our members are fully committed to curbing the unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) and they comply with the present regulations issued by TRAI in this regard. We would like to highlight that the issue of unwanted, spam calls and unwanted and unsolicited messages of all types are acknowledged globally to be a nuisance and an irritant to the customers. Various methods have been devised to attempt to handle this problem globally. The Regulator has also made several attempts to address the matter and the TSPs reiterate they are compliant with the present TRAI requirements.

The new Regulations issued today provide additional details, which are we are reviewing. We reiterate our previous concern about regulations that are issued without a proper cost/benefit analysis, especially in the present situation of the stressed financial condition of the industry and its ability to absorb additional regulatory costs. We remain concerned about whether the regulation addresses the issues of unsolicited calls origination from unregistered tele-marketers. We are reviewing the regulation to see if this is adequately addressed.

The time frames for implementing, especially given the requirement to implement Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), which has not been implemented by any other regulator, appears too stringent and difficult to achieve. However, we are committed to addressing our customers’ concerns and will work with TRAI to see whether our mutual concerns and interests can be met.”

Mr. Rajan S Mathews, DG, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI)