TRAI convened meeting of Joint Committee of Regulators

A meeting of Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) was convened by TRAI on 21^st May 2024 at TRAI HQ New Delhi. The meeting was attended by the representatives of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) and TRAI as members of JCoR and representatives from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as special invitees. Shri Anil Kumar Lahoti, Chairperson, TRAI also addressed the meeting. The JCoR is a collaborative initiative by TRAI to study regulatory implications in the digital world and to collaboratively work on regulations.

Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) is a major source of inconvenience to the public and impinges on the privacy of individuals. UCC is also adopted for misuse by fraudsters. Various possible collaborative approaches and measures to deal with UCC and frauds through telecom resources were discussed in the meeting. The key issues discussed are as given below-

• Unsolicited calls from unauthorised 10-digit mobile numbers as also from landline numbers.
• Use of 140 series by Principal Entities (entities making commercial communication using telecom resources) for making promotional calls.
• Use of 160 series by the Principal Entities for making service and transactional calls for easy identification by the consumers.
• Role of Principal Entities, particularly entities in BFSI (Banking, Finance Services & Insurance) sector in prevention of UCC calls and messages.
• Acquisition of digital consents by the Principal Entities through Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system established by the Telecom Service Providers through a simple and transparent process with due verification from the customer using OTP. DCA also permits revocation of the consents by the customers.
• Whitelisting of Urls/Apks/OTT Links/Call back numbers in content templates.
• Control of frauds using telecom resources and further strengthening the KYC process.
• Sharing of information through platforms.