Today, TRAI has announced the implementation of a blockchain-based ecosystem (Distributed Ledger Technology, or DLT) to combat Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC). UCC is a major source of inconvenience for the public and infringes on individuals’ privacy. This was first proposed by TRAI back in 2018.
TRAI claims that this implementation was done in a co-regulatory manner, with the support of all telecom service providers. All commercial promoters and telemarketers must register on the DLT platform and obtain customer consent to receive various types of promotional messages on the time and day of their choosing, according to the Regulation.
TRAI said that are about 2,50,000 Principal Entities registered with more than 6,00,000 Headers and approx. 55,00,000 approved message templates which are being pushed to consumers through registered Tele Marketers & TSPs using DLT platforms.
It said that this has resulted in substantial reduction of customer complaints to the extent of 60% for Registered Tele Marketers (RTMs). Now complaints are reported against Unregistered Tele Marketers (UTMs), where surge has been seen in pushing various kinds of UCC SMSs. Additionally, UCC calls are also one of the concerns which need to be dealt equally along with UCC SMSs.
To prevent this, TRAI said that it taking necessary steps to check UCC from UTMs has also implemented a UCC detection system, provided digital consent acquisition, and performed intelligent scrubbing of the header and message templates using AI and ML, among other things, to check UCC from Unregistered Tele Marketers (UTMs).
In addition, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) claims to have taken the initiative to form a Joint Committee of Regulators (JCOR) comprised of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MoCA) to develop a joint action plan to combat financial frauds involving telecom resources.
Overall, this seems like a beneficial implementation considering the fact that it’s built on blockchain technology, which puts users’ privacy first.