Tezzbuzz Desk- Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is continuously implementing new rules to stop the increasing spam calls and fraud calls in the country. However, now the popular caller ID platform Truecaller has raised questions regarding these rules. The company says that due to the new instructions of TRAI, it is becoming difficult to protect users from unwanted calls and this may increase the risk of spam calls.
Actually, TRAI has directed caller ID apps not to mark commercial calls coming from 1400 and 1600 number series as spam. Truecaller says that this decision may make it difficult for users to differentiate between important and unwanted calls.
Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala expressed his concern over TRAI’s anti-spam framework on social media platform X. He said that the problem of spam calls may increase instead of decreasing. He claims that in the current system, the number series created to identify business calls is being misused. Due to this, customers’ trust in these calls has decreased. According to Truecaller, the company aims to provide users with a secure calling experience, but new regulations are limiting the capabilities of the caller ID platform.
TRAI had launched 1400 and 1600 number series in the year 2024 to make identification of commercial calls easier. The 1400 series is used primarily for telemarketing calls, while the 1600 series is used for service and transactional calls. TRAI’s objective was to enable users to know whether an incoming call is from a company or service provider. It was also expected to help in preventing fake calls and online fraud.
According to Truecaller CEO, the company’s internal data has revealed that in the last eight months, users have rejected about 81 percent of calls coming from 1400 series and about 79 percent of calls coming from 1600 series. The company says that during the same period, users blocked about 7.4 crore calls coming from these number series.
However, due to TRAI regulations Truecaller cannot directly mark these numbers as spam. That’s why the company has introduced a new “Frequently Blocked” badge, indicating to users that a number has been repeatedly blocked by multiple people.
TRAI believes that the 1400 and 1600 series will help in streamlining commercial calls and will help in controlling fake calls. At the same time, Truecaller argues that the reliability of a call cannot be determined just by the number series. The company says that user experience and community reporting should also be taken into consideration.
At present, this debate is going on between TRAI and caller ID platforms regarding spam calls. In the coming time, it remains to be seen what kind of solution the regulators and companies come up with for the safety of the users.
