Consultation Paper No. 08 /2010
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
Consultation Paper
on
Review of
Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications
Regulations
11th May, 2010
Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhavan,
Jawahar Lal Nehru Marg, (old Minto Road),
New Delhi – 110002, India
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Preface
Telecommunication revolution has changed our social behavior in many
ways. Telephone has become a ubiquitous communication medium and
necessity for various social and commercial purposes. People have started
using telephone for marketing and advertising, commonly known as
‗telemarketing‘, apart from personal voice communication,. Now-a-days, a
wide range of products and services are offered through telemarketing.
However, majority of the telemarketing calls are unsolicited, where the
telecom consumers have not given their explicit prior consent for receiving
such calls from telemarketers. Most of the telecom-consumers find
telemarketing calls/short messages (SMSs) inconvenient and disturbing;
as such calls are made at any time of the day encroaching on the privacy
of telecom consumers.
Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) are one of the major
issues of concern for telecom consumers and resulted in large number of
complaints. In order to curb Unsolicited Commercial Communications,
TRAI notified the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications
Regulations 2007 and National Do Not Call (NDNC) Registry was
established. However, it is observed that despite various measures,
dissatisfaction among telecom consumers continues regarding unsolicited
commercial calls/SMSs. Such Unsolicited Commercial Communications
are found to be originating from both registered and unregistered
telemarketers.
Independent surveys conducted by TRAI also indicated that a vast
majority of customers do not wish to receive Unsolicited Commercial
Communications/ telemarketing calls/ SMS, but still they have not
registered in the NDNC Registry