Shri Milind Deora, the Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology informed Rajya Sabha today in a written reply that the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) has recently imposed regulations to curb unsolicited calls and messages to mobile phone users by telemarketers and telecom companies. Since coming into force of “The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010” from 27th September 2011, the number of unwanted commercial calls/SMS has come down substantially. Prior to coming into force of this regulation, on an average 47454 complaints were received per month (March 2010 to March 2011). However, the total number of complaints lodged by telecom consumers with their service providers from 27th September to 30th November 2011 were only 9746 (4498 complaints per month). From these complaints, it is seen that the complaints largely relate to unsolicited SMS while complaints relating to unsolicited calls have reduced considerably. Also it is seen that the majority of complaints of unsolicited commercial communications relate to un-registered telemarketers.
The reply further stated that to prevent such harassment to the consumers, the following action has been taken against the violators till 30th November, 2011.
i. 3409 notices has been sent to subscribers who have not registered as a telemarketer but were doing the telemarketing activities. 410 telephone numbers of such subscribers have been disconnected.
ii. In case of violations by registered telemarketers since coming into force of these regulations from 27th September 2011, till 30th November 2011 the Access Providers have penalized registered telemarketers in 18 case and deposited Rs 6,05,000 with TRAI.
Source : PIB Release, Dec. 16, 2011
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