Truecaller Highlights Impact of TRAI Oversight on Business Operations
Truecaller has expressed concerns about the impact of TRAI’s current restrictions that bar the app from displaying spam notifications for calls coming from the 140 and 160 number series used by banks and telemarketers.
After the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ordered Truecaller to stop issuing spam alerts for numbers in the 140 and 160 series, the caller ID company took a stand on July 8th. Those two series were put into place last year as the authorised numbers for telemarketing and banking calls to users.
Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala expressed his gratitude to the government for acknowledging the spam problem in March in an interview with a media outlet. He elaborated by saying that the company enjoys good ties with the Department of Telecommunications, with which it gladly exchanges fraud data. However, things have gone downhill between Truecaller and the government when TRAI sought to prohibit the display of labels on the designated series.
TRAI Changing the Spam Rules
In the frequently revised Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, TRAI recognised this series as a means for banks and telemarketers to obtain legitimate consent from users. The regulations outline the necessary parameters for this process. Truecaller would no longer be able to provide spam warnings for calls on certain approved series, according to some additional text that TRAI added to the regulations this year. Truecaller has started displaying green badges for callers from these series since last year, in compliance to a TRAI requirement.
But the company said it added a "Frequently Blocked" label to some of the green badges after seeing over 1 lakh blocking actions daily (and over 5 crore blocking actions overall) on these numbers. A warning shot was arguably launched by Truecaller in April in response to the draft requirement. In its reply, the company said that the proposed rule might not pass muster in court and should be repealed entirely. Reportedly, TRAI sought permission to regulate caller ID apps from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
TRAI Replicating Truecaller
By requiring caller name presentation (CNAM or CNAP), TRAI has sought to imitate Truecaller's functionality. This feature allows users to view the name of the caller who has been registered with Know Your Customer (KYC). Platform regulation has expanded beyond the traditional purview of several government agencies in recent months. Last year, the Department of Telecommunications gave WhatsApp SIM-binding instructions.
The DoT ordered messaging platform to prevent accounts from functioning if the phone does not have a registered SIM inserted in the device on which the app is being used. Truecaller and WhatsApp have also been ordered by the IT Ministry to temporarily disable their username feature. Taking this action is part of the Ministry's ongoing research into the effects of hiding phone numbers on spam distribution and attribution.
This new development exemplifies the ever-changing regulatory landscape of India's digital communications ecosystem, thanks to the growing overlap between telecom rules and internet platforms. Regulators are pursuing increased oversight to ensure that consumer protection is maintained while maintaining the integrity of authorised communication networks, as call-filtering applications become more influential in determining which calls consumers answer.
