Blockchain would be a key feature!
Recently Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) notified draft Telecom Commercial Communication
Customer Preference Regulation, 2018, that is proposed to curb the problem of Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC).
Unsolicited commercial communication, or spam, is a major nuisance to telecom subscribers. To curb the menace, TRAI established a "Do Not Disturb" registry under regulations made in 2010. Twenty-three crore subscribers have registered themselves on the DND Registry since then.
But the problem was not fully contained because unscrupulous elements started obtaining customers' consent, often surreptitiously, or resorted to use of unregistered telemarketers that call or message from a ten-digit number. In more recent times, the incidence of fraud calls has also been on the rise.
To overcome these problems, TRAI initiated public consultation by releasing a consultation paper on the subject on 14/09/2017. After considering the written submissions and the inputs received during the Open House Discussion held on 15/12/2017, TRAI has now formulated regulations which leverage technology and offer a more agile process to deal with the dynamic nature of this problem.
TRAI says, the important new features of this regulation are: a) Adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology (or blockchain) as the RegTech to enforce regulatory compliance while allowing innovation in the market. Blockchain has proven useful where the objective is to cryptographically secure information and make it available only on need to know basis.
Yet none may deny their actions or tamper with records, once recorded on the distributed ledger, which uniformly enforces compliance. It appears to be the first instance anywhere in the world to
use this technology at such a scale in the telcom sector. b) Co-regulation where Telecom Service Providers/ Access Providers establish and arrange framework, which is legally backed by regulation.
The draft regulation issued recently & shall be open for comments up to the 11th of June, 2018.
