Tired of spam calls? TRAI directs telcos to act against spammers without complaints

New Delhi: Telecom operators will now have to take action against suspected spam callers flagged by their artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning systems, even without a complaint from consumers, under new rules notified by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

TRAI has notified the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2026 (05 of 2026), introducing a mechanism to identify and penalise suspected spammers based on AI-generated alerts.

Under the new rules, whenever a telecom operator's AI or machine learning system flags an incoming call as "suspected spam", it must share details of the call with the operator from whose network the call originated within two hours of the identification.

The originating access provider will then have one business day to identify the unique KYC identifiers of the sender associated with the flagged calls and share the details with other telecom operators.

All telecom operators will subsequently check whether their networks have other connections linked to the suspected sender during the preceding 10 days.

If five or more called line identifications (CLIs) of the same sender are identified within the 10-day period, the telecom operators concerned will have to take action against the sender.

For a first violation triggered through the AI-based system, outgoing services of all telecom resources allotted to the sender will be barred for 15 days. This will apply regardless of whether the particular telecom resources were actually used to make the suspected spam communications.

For subsequent violations, all telecom resources of the sender, including SIMs and PRI/SIP trunks, will be disconnected by all access providers for one year. The sender will also be placed on a blacklist for the duration, and telecom operators will not be allowed to provide new telecom resources to the violator during the one-year period.

However, the sender will be allowed to retain one telephone number with outgoing services barred. The number can be used to access notified emergency outgoing services.

Truecaller, similar apps face restrictions
The amended regulations also place restrictions on call management applications and similar services such as Truecaller.

Such applications cannot tag, block or filter incoming calls originating from number series designated by TRAI or the Central Government, including number series such as 1600 used for certain commercial and government communications.

Consumers, however, will remain free to block or filter calls on their own devices for personal use.

Moreover, TRAI has also introduced a simplified option for consumers who want to block promotional commercial communications. Subscribers can send BLOCK PROMO to 1909 to block promotional communications across all categories, content types, modes, time bands and day types.

The facility will not block transactional or service-related commercial communications or government communications.

Existing preferences registered under the "FULLY BLOCK" category will be migrated to "BLOCK PROMO" within 15 days of the notification.

New charge for A2P calls
The amended regulations also allow terminating access providers to charge originating access providers up to 5 paise per minute for application-to-person (A2P) calls.

The new regulations will come into force one month after their publication in the Gazette, with different provisions being implemented in phases over 60 to 90 days.
The provisions relating to A2P calling will take effect after 60 days.

Rules concerning an appeal mechanism through a blockchain technology layer, corroboration of consumer complaints with AI-flagged suspected high-probability senders and suspension of services for incorrect categorisation of content templates will come into effect after 90 days.
(With PTI inputs)