Unsolicited telemarketing calls may soon become history. Under new guidelines on unsolicited commercial calls, telecom regulatory authority of India (TRAI) proposes to forbid banks from using the services of direct sales agents for marketing financial tools. Banking industry accounts for about 90 per cent of the unsolicited calls, according to TRAI estimates. There are about 30,000 direct sales agents appointed by banks and they are not covered by any rules and regulations as they do not have a licence from any government authority.

The new guidelines that regulators would propose this week would make it mandatory for all the banks to use the services of other service providers (OSPs), who are licensed entities and work under the guidelines formulated by the department of telecommunications (DoT).

TRAI’s new proposals would envisage maintaining a central do-not call (DNC) list by National Informatics Centre (NIC) on a national level. Those subscribers who do not wish to be disturbed would register themselves in the national DNC list. The new regulations would forbid OSPs to make telemarketing calls to those subscribers registered in the DNC list. Presently, most of the banks maintain individual DNC list. It is very cumbersome for a subscriber to get registered in all the lists. Moreover, most of the subscribers do not even know that such lists exist. TRAI would also ask the DoT to change the licensing conditions for OSPs. If an OSP makes telemarketing calls to subscribers registered in the DNC list, then there would be a provision of penalty on the OSP. Though the amount of penalty has not yet been decided, it would be significant enough to discourage an OSP in violating licensing conditions, said a TRAI official.

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