The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has mooted a proposal to revise penalties to be levied on service providers and telemarketing companies for making unsolicited sales pitches.
Under the revised proposal, the regulator would levy a penalty of Rs 500 from a telecom service provider for the first instance of non-compliance, and Rs 20,000 per call for repeated offences.
On the other hand, a registered telemarketer would be charged with a fine of Rs 500 for the first unsolicited call and Rs 1,000 for subsequent calls, Trai said in a release here today.
This is a deviation from the regulations issued by Trai on June 5, 2007, under which it had suggested that a flat Rs 500 would be levied from defaulters. The regulator had also mentioned that operators were at liberty to disconnect telemarketers' lines "if they are found to be violating the rules".
In June 2007, Trai had set up a National Do-Not-Call (NDNC) registry and subscribers registered with it were not to be disturbed with unsolicited calls. The registry came into being on October 12, 2007.
However, it would take sometime before the new proposal becomes a regulation, as Trai has floated a short consultation paper (calling for suggestions from the industry) on the proposed amendment.
"The objective is to increase the effectiveness of these regulations by providing some financial sanctions to non-compliant telecom service providers and thereby reducing the nuisance and inconvenience to the subscribers from unsolicited tele-marketing callers," Trai said.
According to Trai, over 7.5 million phone users and 12,183 telemarketers have registered with the NDNC. The registry is being accessed by around 600 telemarketers every day for scrubbing their calling list.
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