May 11: With National Do Not Call Registry failing to stop the harassment of consumers by telemarketers, telecom regulator Trai has now proposed a new system — National Do Call Registry.
In the new system, telemarketers can call only those consumers, who register with the do call registry. On the other hand, telemarketers will get the list of telephone numbers of people, who wish to receive advertisement on a pre-identified product or service.
The current system, however, puts onus on the consumer to register with the Do-Not-Call registry, if he does not want to receive tele-marketing calls. This mechanism, however, proved ineffective as only 65.82 million subscribers — about 10.5 per cent of all telephone subscribers — have registered for barring telemarketers’ calls till March 31, 2010.
“There are a number of complaints about the Do-Not-Call Registry. A small percentage of consumers have actually registered for it, therefore we are proposing this new system,” said the Trai chairman, Mr J.S. Sarma.
He said that the regulator has sought for the views of the industry on this issue and after analysing them, Trai will firm up its recommendations.
Despite registering with Do-Not-Call Registry, a large number of consumers have complained to their telecom service providers about getting unsolicited ads. Till January 31 this year, 3.4 lakh such complaints have been received by service providers.
In addition, the frequency of receiving unsolicited messages through SMS and MMS has become higher as compared to voice calls.