Call peril

New Delhi, March 17: Watch it telemarketing pests as well as those who don’t do enough to weed them out: you might be fined up to Rs 20,000 if you don’t mend your ways.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India today announced stricter regulations for service providers and registered telemarketing firms that fail to rein in unsolicited calls.

It announced the notification of the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications (Amendment) Regulations, 2008, which makes both liable to pay fines up to Rs 20,000.

A service provider who fails to take action after the first complaint by a user would be fined Rs 5,000. After a second complaint, the fine would go up to Rs 20,000.

A telemarketing company would be liable to pay Rs 500 for the first unwanted call or text message and Rs 1,000 for every subsequent one.

“The objective of financial penalties is to increase the effectiveness of the do-not-call regulations and reduce the nuisance and inconvenience to subscribers from unsolicited calls,” a Trai official said.

But mobile service providers contended that they could not be held responsible for telemarketers who violate regulations and dial persons enlisted with the national do-not-call (NDNC) registry.

“Service providers are mere carriers of messages. Penalising them would not only be unfair but also be against the spirit of cooperation that is the basis of unsolicited commercial call regulation,” said Dilip Sahay of the Association of Unified Service Providers of India.

Last October, Trai had set up the NDNC registry to ensure that unwanted calls to sell bank loans, mutual funds or other products were not made to mobile or landline numbers recorded in its database. The registry has, however, had very little effect.

According to Trai figures, about 13,600 telemarketers are registered with the department of telecommunication. “The NDNC is being accessed daily by around 600 telemarketers for scrubbing their calling list,” it said.

Of approximately 1,522 million numbers uploaded by the telemarketers, 1,411 million numbers had been cleared by the NDNC, it added.

“However, there are cases where customers registered with the NDNC are getting calls or SMS either from registered or unregistered telemarketers or the service providers themselves,” said Trai principal adviser N. Parameswaran.

“Thus, we are amending the rules to bring in more enforcement that would seek to put an end to all this.”

Trai has asked users to notify service providers within 15 days of receiving unwanted calls or text messages.