51,000 subscribers disconnected for making unsolicited calls, SMSes

Consumers and authorities have been trying to deal with and effectively tackle the menace of unsolicited calls and SMSes for a while now. The government has now disconnected more than 51,000 telephone connections belonging to the subscribers who did not register themselves as telemarketers, but continued to indulge in telemarketing activity, reports The Hindu. In his written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Communications and IT, Milind Deora revealed that around 88,300 subscribers have been sent notices for similar violations. 

Keeping out unsolicited calls and texts

Under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010, subscribers who are not registered with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as telemarketers are not allowed to make any commercial communications. Should such a violator surface, the operator issues a notice to the subscriber telling him or her to stop. If the violation continues, the Regulation has provisions for disconnecting the subscriber. 

Deora further added that the government is aware of the spate of calls and SMSes being sent or made by subscribers who are not registered with the TRAI as telemarketers. The registered telemarketers are allotted the '140' number series, which the unregistered ones do not possess. 

The Do Not Disturb (DND) registry has been one of TRAI's pathbreaking facilities for mobile phone users. It benefits those miffed by the endless stream of promotional calls and SMSes. Users have the option of signing up in the DND registry by following a simple process to ensure that their numbers are not flooded with spam calls and texts. The government went ahead to limit the maximum number of SMSes that could be sent from a phone number in a day to 200, in a further attempt to put an end to unwanted phone calls and text messages.