New Delhi- To curb the misuse of messaging services and protect consumers from fraudulent practices, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a new circular.

According to the new circular, all service providers will be required to migrate telemarketing calls starting with the 140 series to the online DLT platform by September 30, 2024. This move is aimed at providing better monitoring and control over the calls.

In addition, all service providers will be prohibited from sending messages containing URLs, APKs, OTT links, or call back numbers that are not whitelisted by the senders starting from September 1, 2024. The circular states that TRAI has mandated that the trail of all messages from the senders to the recipients must be traceable starting from November 1, 2024. Any message with an undefined or mismatched telemarketer chain will be rejected.

The TRAI has also announced that it has introduced punitive measures for non-compliance. Under this, the content templates registered under the wrong category will be blacklisted, and repeated offenses will lead to a one-month suspension of the sender's services. The circular states that all headers and content templates registered on DLT must adhere to the prescribed guidelines. Additionally, a single content template cannot be linked to multiple headers.

In case the misuse of headers or content templates of any sender is reported, TRAI has directed the immediate suspension of traffic from all the headers and content templates of that sender for their verification. However, TRAI says that revocation of traffic from the sender will be done only after legal action is taken by the sender against such misuse. The circular also states that delivery telemarketers must identify and report the entities responsible for such misuse within two business days, failing which they will face similar consequences.