Bharti Airtel vice-chairman and MD Gopal Vittal has urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI ) to expand its regulatory oversight to over-the-top (OTT) communication platforms in order to significantly curb spam.
In a recent letter to TRAI secretary Atul Kumar Chaudhary, Vittal has recommended three immediate steps to TRAI to address the issue of spams over OTT. First involves extending the digital consent acquisition (DCA) framework to OTT platforms. Second, mandating KYC framework for OTTs, and third is expanding the centralised blacklist system for spam detection to OTT platforms.
“While regulatory efforts have significantly curbed spam and unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) over SMS and voice, bad actors are increasingly shifting their operations OTT communication platforms, where regulatory oversight remains limited,” Vittal said in the letter.
His suggestions were in response to TRAI’s letter to Airtel, commending its role in the successful implementation of the SMS traceability framework, which the regulator had mandated telcos to do to avoid SMS frauds.
The ability of fraudsters to bypass telecom regulations through these platforms creates new challenges, leaving consumers vulnerable to phishing, financial fraud, and other security threats, Vittal explained.
Vittal’s suggestions come at a time when TRAI has amended the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR) 2018 and introduced easy spam reporting mechanism, new do not disturb app, penalties on telcos on non-compliance, and opt-out option from promotional messages, among key things.
However, the TRAI regulations do not apply to OTTs as the same is currently out of its ambit, officials said.
According to Vittal, the DCA framework will ensure that users can seamlessly manage their consent across both telecom and digital communication channels. The same helps consumers to control promotional communications.
Just like telcos do a KYC for users, a similar verification framework for OTT platforms will help improve traceability, accountability, and consumer safety, Vittal said, adding that lack of blacklist system in OTT platforms allow repeat offenders to continue their activities unchecked.
Airtel last year also introduced its AI driven anti-spam solution.
“Our industry’s first anti-spam tool has brought significant relief. We have been able to alert 252 million unique customers and effectively combat the spam menace. Powered by our AI driven network, this identifies over 1 million unique spammers making more than 130 million calls a day.
That’s roughly a trillion records that it’s processed on a daily basis,” Vittal said during an earnings call.
Among other key things, Vittal has urged TRAI to create a unified consumer protection and compliance framework, which includes a robust authorisation/licensing framework for principal entities (PEs) and telemarketers (TMs).
The same should also include strong penalties. “This (ensuring accountability of PEs and TMs, is especially imperative given that TSPs are merely the conduits while the PEs/TMs are actual content generators,” Vittal said.
Airtel has also sought TRAI’s intervention in pitching for global standards against calling line identification (CLI) spoofing. Financial Express