To curb the misuse of messaging services and protect consumers from fraudulent practices, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued certain directions on Tuesday.
TRAI has mandated the Access Service Providers to migrate telemarketing calls starting with 140 series to online DLT platform latest by 30th September 2024 for better monitoring and control.
Effective from 1st September 2024, TRAI said that all Access Service Providers will be prohibited from transmitting messages containing URLs, APKs, OTT links, or call back numbers which are not whitelisted by the Senders.
The authority has also mandated that the trail of all messages from Senders to recipients must be traceable from 1st November 1, 2024. Any message with an undefined or mismatched telemarketer chain will be rejected.
TRAI has also announced measure to deter the misuse of templates for promotional content. It has introduced punitive measures for non-compliance of the same.
Content Templates registered under the wrong category will be blacklisted, and repeated offenses will lead to a one-month suspension of the Sender’s services.
In order to ensure compliance with regulations, all Headers and Content Templates registered on DLT must adhere to prescribed guidelines.
Additionally, a single Content Template cannot be linked to multiple Headers, it said.
TRAI has clearly mentioned that in case misuse of headers or content templates of any Sender comes to the notice, it has directed immediate suspension of traffic from all the Headers and Content Templates of that Sender for their verification.
Revocation of traffic from the Sender shall be done only after legal action is taken by the Sender against such misuse, it said.
Further, Delivery-Telemarketers must identify and report entities responsible for such misuse within two business days, failing which they will face similar consequences.