India might be winning the battle but losing the war on spam calls. While data shows that unsolicited phone calls and texts from telemarketers are on the decline, WhatsApp and Internet-based spam is on the rise, industry experts say.
The number of complaints lodged by consumers on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) portal (www.nccptrai.gov.in) about spam calls first rose after the passage of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (2010) and has now begun to decline, Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said in the Rajya Sabha.
The government has fined service operators who failed to take action to the tune of Rs.7.13 crore, disconnected 12.6 lakh phone connections of spam callers, blacklisted 19 telemarketers permanently and blacklisted another 2.4 lakh for two years, the Minister said.
But these steps may not be enough, industry experts warn. The government’s regulation that curbed spam calls and texts does not apply to WhatsApp. “Spam sent over WhatsApp, Internet-based spam calls and spam messages — the current regulations do not cover it, and this is a major new front for unsolicited calls and messages,” Rajan Mathews, Director-General of the Cellular Operators Association of India, told The Hindu .
