TRAI directs to curb misuse of messaging services from Sep 1

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday mandated access service providers to take concrete measures to curb misuse of messaging services, effective from September 1.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated them to migrate telemarketing calls starting with 140 series to online distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform latest by September 30 for better monitoring and control.

Effective from September 1, all access service providers will be prohibited from transmitting messages containing URLs, APKs, OTT links, or call back numbers which are not whitelisted by the senders.

The TRAI directive further mandated that the trail of all messages from senders to recipients must be traceable from November 1, 2024. Any message with an undefined or mismatched telemarketer chain will be rejected.

To deter the misuse of templates for promotional content, TRAI has introduced punitive measures for non-compliance.