Trai declines DoT’s request to regulate telemarketers

New Delhi: Consumers are unlikely to get much respite from spam communications in the near future, with the telecoms regulator believed to have effectively rejected the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) request to bring telemarketers under a regulatory mechanism.

While the current regulatory framework devised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to curb spam communications places the onus on telecom operators to tackle the issue, telemarketers-who play a central role in aggregating and disseminating commercial messages via telecom channels-are not covered by any regulatory ambit and are therefore practically unaccountable, according to industry experts.