The Department of Telecom has come up with a plan to further decrease the trouble that pesky callers create by putting a penalty on them of Rs. 10,000 for every call and SMS made by telemarketers after violating the norms 50 times, says an official source.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has introduced to make the standards further rigorous by decreasing the parts for imposing a penalty to ₹1,000 per violation for 0-10 breaches, ₹5,000 each for 10-50 violations, and ₹10,000 each for more than 50 breaches.
Currently, the slabs for the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018 are 0-100, 100-1,000, and higher than 1,000 violations. Besides, the DoT’s Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) will investigate breaches at the device level as well.
The DIU will be generating a systematic message to be sent to the suspected number for confirmation and authentication. In cases where the numbers cannot be verified, all those numbers will be disconnected and associated IMEIs will be included in the suspected list. No calls, SMSes, or data will be allowed for the IMEIs which come under the suspected list category for a duration of 30 days, says a report.
If pesky or troubling callers make any communication from a new connecting using the device with IMEI number registered in the grey list will be asked to go for re-verification. If the pesky caller afterward makes any changes to the device, the IMEI number of the new device will also be added to the suspected list by the system till the re-confirmation is not completed.
Again if the pesky caller’s number gets activated after re-verification and it is found to be again breaking the norms, then the new connection usage will be limited to 20 calls and 20 SMSes per day for a period of six months.
