The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on Tuesday, directed telecom service providers (TSPs) to deploy Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning-based systems to detect, identify, and act against the senders of Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) that are not registered in accordance with regulations. .
The regulator has asked access providers to comply with the directions and report on the actions taken within 30 days.
Entities that are not get registered with the access providers and use 10 digits mobile numbers for sending commercial communications through messages or calls are called Unregistered Telemarketers (UTMs).
“TRAI has been taking various steps to curb UCC, which is a major source of inconvenience to the public. It has resulted in reduction in complaints against registered telemarketers. Despite measures taken by the TSPs, UCC from UTMs is still continuing,” it said.
At times, these UTMs trap customers into sharing their critical information, causing financial loss to the customers, the sector regulator added.
To detect, identify and act against such UTMs, TRAI has been insisting access service providers to implement UCC_Detect System with requisite functionalities within the framework of TRAI’s Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018). They have implemented such detect system as per their suitability and feasibility, it noted.
“However, since the UTMs are continuously evolving new techniques to send unsolicited communications and the current UCC detect systems deployed by the access service providers are not fully capable to detect such UCC,” said TRAI.
In order to have uniformity of UCC Detect System implementations, TRAI has directed access providers to deploy AI and ML based UCC_Detect system capable of constantly evolving to deal with new signatures, new patterns and new techniques used by UTMs.
Access providers have also been directed to share intelligence with other access providers using distributed ledger technology or DLT platform, it added.
Published on June 13, 2023
