The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has tightened its regulatory framework to curb unsolicited commercial communications (UCC), including spam calls and messages, while enhancing accountability of telecom service providers, senders and telemarketers.
The regulator has introduced the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2026, following a consultation process that began on March 13. TRAI had sought stakeholder views on measures including AI/ML-based detection of suspected UCC, stronger complaint-based enforcement, regulation of Application-to-Person (A2P) calls, recognition of legacy consent, a consumer appeal mechanism and safeguards against misuse of headers and content templates.
Moreover, comments on the draft were received until April 19, followed by counter-comments until May 4. An Open House Discussion with stakeholders was also held on June 3 before the final regulations were notified. Under the amended framework, telecom service providers (TSPs) will use AI/ML-based systems to identify Calling Line Identifications (CLIs) suspected of being used for UCC and share such information across operators. If five or more CLIs linked to a sender are flagged within 10 days, further investigation and graded action may follow, including KYC re-verification, physical verification, suspension of outgoing services and, in cases of repeated violations, disconnection of telecom resources. Calls originating from designated commercial communication series such as 140xx, 1600xx and 1601xx will not be flagged as suspected spam for recipients, helping protect legitimate commercial and government communications from being incorrectly classified.