Pesky calls to nag customers for one more month

NEW DELHI - Pesky calls will continue to trouble the subscribers for one more month as the telecom regulator Tuesday gave the mobile phone firms another month to curb unsolicited commercial calls and messages.

“Telemarketers registration shall commence from Jan 15 and other provisions shall come into force from Feb 1,” said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a statement.

“Having regard to security audit of the website and other processes involved, TRAI has found it necessary to re-determine the dates for implementation of the regulations,” it added.

Earlier this month, the telecom watchdog announced a set of new measures to curb unsolicited commercial calls and messages, which were to be implemented from Jan 1.

The regulations included a fine in the range of Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 250,000 for the defaulting companies and allocation of a number starting with “70″ to the telemarketers making it easy for the customers to recognise their numbers.

Unlike the previous regulation that asked customers to register their numbers in “do not call” list, users can now choose from different categories like “fully blocked” or “partially blocked,” under which a customer can receive communication for categories of his choice.

According to a telecom lobby, the delay has been caused as the telecom operators had requested for some more time to meet the contractual obligations with the telemarketing companies to comply with the security concerns.

“We had asked the TRAI for some more time. There is a whole lot of work that has to be done in order to comply with the security cocerns, including setting up of infrastructure to filter calls,” said Rajan Mathew, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India.

Asked if the operators will be able to meet this new deadline, Mathew said, “We will try our best and are hopeful that it will be implemented.”