The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mandated that all Access Service Providers to immediately stop voice promotional calls from all unregistered senders or telemarketers to curb the increasing number of spam calls. The Communications Ministry said, if any unregistered sender is found to be misusing its telecom resources for making commercial voice calls, it will be blacklisted by the Originating Access Provider for a period of up to two years. It added that no new telecom resources will be allocated to such senders by any Access Provider during the period of blacklisting.

The Ministry also said all unregistered senders using telecom resources to make commercial voice calls to citizens shall be migrated to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform within a month. It has directed all Access Providers to comply with the directives and submit updates on the actions taken on the 1st and 16th of every month. The Ministry said the action is expected to significantly reduce spam calls and provide relief to consumers.