TMCnet News
New Telecom regulations come into fore [Asian News International](Asian News International Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) New Delhi, Sep 27 (ANI): Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday marked the enforcement of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR) 2010 by sending a sms on 1909 to register for not receiving unsolicited/pesky calls and smses. Speaking on the occasion, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said with this launch a long-standing demand has been fulfilled. With these regulations in force, customer who does not want to receive commercial communications can register himself in 'National Customer Preference Register (NCPR) by simply dialing 1909 or sending SMS to 1909. Some of the key features of this regulation are - options to customers to exercise his preference, separate number for telemarketers starting with 140, easy registration of the telemarketers, sharing of database, blacklisting provisions, filtering of calls and SMS by service providers, restriction on more than 100 SMS per SIM per day, effective complaint redressal system and financial disincentive on Access Providers. Sibal, however, clarified that messages involving transactions are not covered under these restrictions. This includes messages sent by schools to students, parents, financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, credit cards etc. In order to curb unsolicited commercial communication, which are a major cause of disturbance and inconvenience for Telecom users, TRAI notified "Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communication Regulations" in 2007, putting in place a framework for controlling unsolicited commercial communications. This Regulation was further improved through two amendments in 2008. As a result of this regulation, the number of unsolicited calls decreased but the number of unsolicited SMS increased. The Indian telecom customer demanded more from TRAI. After extensive deliberations and consultations with stakeholders, (TRAI) notified "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010, on 1st December 2010. All the provisions of the regulations have come into force from today. The Regulations at one hand empowers the customers to exercise the options to control unsolicited commercial communications (UCC), it also provides the easy way to Telemarketers to Register with TRAI and get telecom resources from Access providers from identified series. Due to low cost and high degree of penetration, telecom services in recent years have become increasingly commercialized. Today, operators want to extract money from every fraction of bandwidth available to them. This has resulted in unwanted commercial calls to telecom service user. Ministers of States for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot and Shri Milind Deora, Telecom Department Secretary R. Chandrsekhar and TRAI Chairman J.S. Sarma were present on the occasion. (ANI) (c) 2011 Asian News International (ANI) - All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |