TRAI vs Truecaller: Inside India’s spam-call showdown between telecom regulator and caller-id giant

India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Truecaller, the Swedish caller-ID app used by more than 300 million Indians, are now locked in a public dispute over how “spam” gets defined, and who gets to define it.

The disagreement is about special phone numbers that TRAI introduced to help people identify genuine business calls. But instead of making things easier, the system has created confusion.

Truecaller says millions of people are now ignoring even real bank and company calls, while TRAI believes apps like Truecaller are making the problem worse by discouraging users from answering those calls.