TRAI allocates new batch of mobile phones to 160 key financial entities to curb spam, ET LegalWorld

The government has earmarked 160 series of mobile phones for making transactional and service voice calls to all entities regulated by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA in the first phase to prevent fraudsters from defrauding citizens.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) met with representatives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and other financial institutions and all telecom service providers (TSPs).

Once the 160 series of mobile phones are implemented, this will help in easily identifying the caller.

The meeting provided a platform for the exchange of ideas between regulators, entities and telecommunications service providers on the effective use of this series, the Ministry of Communications said.

The ministry said that support for the 140 series, currently used for promotional purposes, is being migrated to the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform and digital consent scrubbing is also being implemented.

“With the implementation of the above two measures, spam calls from 10-digit numbers are expected to be significantly controlled,” the ministry said.

At the meeting, regulators, banks and other financial institutions stressed the need for cooperation to curb the menace of spam, especially through voice calls, and assured all cooperation for timely implementation of various TRAI initiatives.