Trai blacklisted over 2 lakh pesky callers, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

The government has blacklisted over 2 lakh unauthorised telemarketers for making pesky calls. These persons or establishments which will not get any telecom connection for period of two years from the date they were named in the list.   As per data shared by Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Rajya Sabha on Friday, “Number of unregistered telemarketers blacklisted for 2 years till July 3, 2014” stood at 2,24,341.   “Trai has notified Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007 putting in place a framework for controlling unsolicited commercial communications… To improve the effectiveness of the framework, the Trai had subsequently amended these regulations from time to time,” Prasad said while reply to question on unwanted calls.   As per the rule, Trai has mandated all telecom operators to disconnect telephone numbers from which an pesky calls or SMS has originated on receipt of the first complaint. The name and address of that telephone subscriber shall then be shared with all other service providers and no service provider will provide any telecom resource in that name and address for a period of two years.   Telecom operators shared that over 9.4 lakh complaints have been registered since the time the regulation has been in place till July 3, 2014. Acting on the complaints government has disconnected 4,94,688 telephone connections and over 8.25 lakh additional phones of entities or number mentioned in the pesky SMS were disconnected.   Trai has sent notices to 403 registered telemarketers as well for making pesky calls. The regulator has deducted total of Rs. 1.73 crore from security amount of telemarketers who were found guilty, as per data shared by Prasad.   PTI