It's possibly the worst news: telemarketers have discovered mobile phones.
And so you get calls from strange numbers, offering you everything from personal loans to free holidays. You play safe and decide to ignore all calls from unknown numbers - and in the process miss out those crucial calls from clients or headhunters. But all this is mere irritation. It's when the telemarketer has information about, say, your bank balance or your credit card dues that things get dangerous.
If concerned citizens, mobile phone service providers and the government have their way, unsolicited calls will soon be history. Let's take a look at what has been done so far to tackle this problem.
Citizen's action
Harsh Pathak, a Delhi-based lawyer, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court last year, through his lawyer Vivek K Tankha, seeking an end to "the endemic invasion of privacy of the subscribers of mobile telephony services". In his petition, Pathak cited cases of how unsolicited calls are dealt with in countries like the US. He also pointed out to the absence of a law in India pertaining to telephone consumers, and the absense of a regulatory forum that consumers can approach.
After hearing the PIL, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice S B Sinha, issued notices to the Centre and the Law Ministry seeking a law to ban unsolicited calls, especially from telemarketing executives. A similar notice was issued to MTNL, Hutch, Reliance Infocomm, Idea Cellular, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, HDFC and ICICI.
Did all this have an effect?
"Initially, calls had stopped. But after a while they started again," says Pathak. In the meantime Pathak filed an interim application in the Supreme Court in mid-February this year to update the court on the developments in the interim. Among other things, the interim application took note of the RBI notification that directed banks to maintain a "Do Not Call" register and not share consumer information with direct sales agents.
The matter finally came for hearing in the second week of March 2006. "In the hearing it was stated that the ministry of telecommunications had convened a meeting of all the cellphone operators and told them that the "Do Not Call" register that they have set up was not working. The ministry has asked for suggestions and the draft has to be submitted to the court in two weeks time," says Pathak.
Company initiatives
Deciding to take matters into its own hands, rather than waiting for orders from elsewhere, Hutch had launched its 'Do Not Disturb' initiative in February last year. This scheme was meant to protect subscribers from Hutch's own marketing as well as calls from other companies. "In case a customer does not want to receive such calls or messages (from Hutch), he can send 'DND' as an SMS to 123 and his number will be struck off the list," says Harit Nagpal, operations director, Hutchison Essar.
The company also allows subscribers to block calls and messages from other telemarketers. All the subscriber has to do is text 'Stop' followed by the telephone number he wants blocked, and send the message to Hutch at 123. "We will trace that call and request the telemarketing company to refrain from making such calls," says Nagpal.
The response to the Do Not Disturb campaign has been good, but what if subscribers still get calls from numbers they want blocked? Nagpal says: "At best what we can do is request the company to stop making such calls. We believe that repeated requests should work."
Joint action
Further, in February this year, Manoj Kohli, president-mobility, Bharti Tele-Ventures wrote to T V Ramachandran, director general, Cellular Operators' Association of India, asking him to convene a meeting of operators so that they could jointly approach the government to seek suitable penalties against marketing agencies.
"Besides annoyance to the customers of mobile operators, such activities also cause serious network load as the incoming calls are free in the hands of customers and carry only a nominal termination charge," Kohli says in his letter.
Typically, such calls are made on behalf of reputed banks, credit card companies and insurance companies. The letter states that such entities have been urged to check their activities, including sending them legal notices.
The initiatives of the service providers, government and consumer associations are still at a nascent stage and it will take some time before telemarketers in India are penalised for making unsolicited calls to mobile phone subscribers. However, with the government starting to take steps to end this menace, harassed consumers can heave a sigh of relief.