Trai in Talks With Meta, Google to Link Spam Reports With Telcos
Regulator seeks a common database to help telecom operators act faster against repeat spam offenders.
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Image Credit- Chetan Jha/ MIT Sloan Management Review India
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is discussing a framework with Meta and Google to bring user-reported spam complaints from platforms such as WhatsApp and smartphone dialers into telecom operators’ anti-spam systems.
The move is aimed at creating a wider reporting network that could help operators identify repeat offenders and take regulatory action against unsolicited commercial communications.
Trai has held discussions with Meta and Google on a mechanism that would allow spam complaints reported through WhatsApp and Google’s built-in phone dialer to feed into telecom operators’ Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform and the regulator’s Do Not Disturb (DND) system, Mint reported.
The DLT platform is already used by telecom operators to register commercial senders, telemarketers and headers, while the DND framework allows consumers to report unwanted commercial calls and messages.
Under the proposed framework, complaints currently handled within individual platforms could become available to telecom operators, allowing them to identify patterns across networks and act against numbers repeatedly reported for spam.
At present, complaints made through WhatsApp or smartphone dialers generally remain within those platforms, limiting enforcement action available to telecom operators.
The move follows Trai’s broader effort to bring third-party spam reporting tools into the telecom regulatory framework. In draft amendments, the regulator proposed that spam reports submitted through call management applications, including phone dialers and third-party apps, should be registered as unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) complaints on the DLT platform maintained by telecom operators.
Trai said such integration would allow faster identification of spam sources because operators can act against telecom resources only when complaints enter the DLT system.
The proposal has also raised data-sharing concerns.
Truecaller objected to the draft provisions, arguing that automatically transferring user-generated spam reports to telecom operators could require call management apps to share commercially valuable user intelligence and reporting data.
Satya N. Gupta, former principal adviser at Trai, said sharing spam data from over-the-top communication platforms and phone dialer applications with telecom operators is technically feasible and could improve collective action against spam.
However, he noted that questions remain over how the cost of storing additional spam data on the DLT platform would be shared among telecom operators and participating platforms.
