Rs 2.15 crore fine collected from pesky callers in 4 months - Times of India

NEW DELHI: Efforts to put an end to the menace of pesky calls and SMSs seem be paying off as there has been a significant decline in unwanted communication from companies, ranging from real estate developers to financial institutions and banks. With telecom regulator Trai putting up a strict monitoring regime over the menace and also imposing penalties, the number of complaints against unwanted communication has dropped to nearly one-fourth against the peak in 2012.

"Against the average 44,000 complaints that we used to get monthly over Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) in 2012, the same has dropped to 11,200 in 2013. We feel thi s reduction is sufficient, and the number may come down further as we go forward," Trai secretary Rajeev Agrawal said.

With not much perceptible change in the situation regarding UCC menace, Trai had in August last year mandated financial penalties on telecom service providers whose networks were used for such calls and SMSs. It had also warned that phone connections of banks, insurance firms and builders will be blacklisted if the mandated rules on unsolicited calls are violated by them, or even their representatives.

Agrawal said that Rs 2.15 crore had been collected through penalties in the last four months. A Trai official said that action had been taken against 68 real estate companies , while banks and insurance companies had received some relaxation till the end of 2013 to sort out their channels.

Trai had come out strongly against various institutions on whose behalf such messages were transmitted or calls made. It had warned that telecom resources issued to the subscriber/entity for which commercial transaction has been solicited shall be disconnected across all service providers on receipt of a complaint, after serving them with two notices. The regulator had also fixed a daily limit of 100 messages that could be sent at concessional rates from mobile phones.

Trai officials said that as many as 6,600 entities have registered as telemarketers following the clampdown. "This figure was only 3,000 before August."

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