Dec. 1: In an order that will come as a relief for harried consumers, telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday has come out with a series of measures targeting unsolicited calls and messages from telemarketers.
The measures list out penalties for telemarketers as well. Trai was forced to review the guidelines on unsolicited calls as subscri-bers were still getting calls from telemarketing companies despite registering on the do not call registry.
It has been decided that telemarketers will use a different set of numbers, starting with ‘70’ — to help subscribers identify the source of an incoming call. All telemarketing calls from 9 pm to 9 am have also been barred.
As per the new guidelines, Trai has asked operators not to offer packages containing more than 100 SMSes per day. This will stop subscribers from making commercial communication from their numbers. These measures will be effective from January 1.
Telemarketing firms that violate the do not call registry will be also liable to pay heavy penalties. For the first offence, the telemarketers will be charged `25,000, which will incre-ase on subsequent offences
The subscriber can now also choose to be listed under the “fully blocked” category — which is akin to the do not call registry — or the “partially blocked” category, in which case he will only receive SMSs in the categories chosen by him.