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.

In countries like the US, UK and Australia, where DNC lists are strictly maintained, violators have to pay huge fines. In the US, the fines are up to $ 1,100 per call. Recently, the US federal trade commission (FTC) has fined cable TV provider DirectTV $5.3 million for violating do not call list. The proposed Australian Do Not Call Act provides for fines up to A$1,100 for violating the act. The entities who regularly violate the act may have to pay fine up to A$1.1 million.

TRAI has also asked DoT to make changes in the licences conditions of service providers. The existing licenses of telecom services do not give any power to a service provider to disconnect a subscriber if he makes unsolicited telemarketing calls. TRAI wants that the licenser should be given powers to disconnect services of such subscribers.

When the US regulator was formulating rules for telemarketers, it gathered that about 17 billion telemarketing calls were completed in a year. The US had a fixedline telephone base of 270 million. By that standard, there should be about 10 billion telemarketing calls on a base of 170 million phones, according to TRAI.