The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has extended the deadline to comply with Traceability Guidelines issued by the same aimed at combating spam. 

Extension Requests 
Earlier the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Airtel, Vodafone-Idea & Jio being a part of it, had requested the regulator to extend the deadline as the Telemarketers were not fully ready with the infrastructure to support the initiative from their end. 

PE-TM chain Decleration 
Following the extension notification, the TRAI has also asserted for the Telcos to ensure that the Principal Entity - Telecom Service Provider (PE-TM) chain declaration from all the entities is received on time. It has also instructed the Telcos to serve notices to the defaulters daily until 30th November 2024. 

Fears Associated 
There were fears associated with the delivery of OTPs, from the sides of Telcos, for important activities like e-commerce activities and financial transactions, to count free among many. Telcos feared that it could lead to a complete failure of the system as the non-whitelisted links were to be completely blocked.  

Traceability Guidelines 
A set of instructions has been issued by the regulator to comply with so as to identify the source of the message and also match the same with the already established mechanism to ensure no spam or fraud is delivered into the inbox. This adds a layer of prior approval, moving beyond the unregulated telecom ecosystem. 

Solution Ahead 
As per the solution offered by the Telcos, they would send a daily report to the Telemarketers & Principal Entities (PEs) to facilitate a corrective approach while not blocking all the messages in case of a mismatch or non-registrant instances. Under this logger mode, a comprehensive review of messages would be undertaken before receding to any conclusion. 

Safe and Secure Ecosystem 
In line with Trai's mission to reduce spam, over 800 entities and individuals have been blacklisted, and more than 1.8 million mobile numbers and telecom resources have been disconnected. This marks a significant effort to clean up the systems from commercial calls.

With this initiative, TRAI seeks to tackle the problem of spam and create a safer telecom environment. The organization has implemented several measures to prevent the misuse of headers and content templates, ensuring safety protocols for consumers. TRAI had also urged telecom companies to sever their ties with any unregistered telemarketer.