US mobile users can claim up to dollar

Mobile Phone marketing Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has disconnected 22,769 mobile connections for sending unsolicited tele marketing SMS or call. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has also imposed penalty on 94 tele marketing companies for violating the rules on commercial mobile calls and SMS. 4 tele marketing firms have been blacklisted in india. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has taken action in line with the new regulations on tele marketing calls that had come into force from September 27, 2011. As per the provisions of this regulation, consumers who do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial mobile call or SMSes have to get registered on National Customer Preference Register. As on March 29, a total of 161.66 million mobile customers have registered their preference on National Customer Preference Register. If unsolicited commercial Mobile calls and SMSes are sent from individual numbers, notice will be served to the Mobile customer and his number will be disconnected on second violation. Accordingly, 36,156 subscribers have been issued notices. Telecom Ministry of India and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India have been trying to deal with pesky Mobile calls for a while. But every time a regulation is put in place, tele marketing firms find a way to circumvent the system. It started with the ‘Do Not Call' registry, which turned out to be a complete failure, as most tele marketers refused to get themselves registered with the Department of Telecom neither didthey scrub numbers with the registry before Mobile calling. Telemarketers now send SMSes in the guise of commercial Mobile messages (like the updates sent by your bank, travel agent or service provider Mobile) since this category does not come under the purview of regulations. The policy has, therefore, been tweaked and re-tweaked a number of times over the past few years in a bid to plug all the gaps. Globally, too, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India are struggling to break this nexus but have had limited success. One big reason for this is the availability of alternate technologies that enable tele marketers to override regulations (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).

For instance, when the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India introduced the ‘100 Mobile SMSes per day' cap in an attempt to put a squeeze on spam Mobile messages, telemarketers started routing the Mobile SMS through international gateways. The Mobile SMSes are sent through overseas operators that do not come under Telecom Regulatory Authority of India purview and, therefore, there is no fear of being blacklisted or penalised. In countries like the US, mobile users can claim up to dollar 1,500 if they get an unsolicited tele marketing Mobile call. Another way of compensating users is to offer them a price per minute value for listening to tele marketing calls. A paper presented by professors at Yale Law School argues that such a “name your own price" mechanism could be easily implemented new technologically by crediting consumers' mobile phone bills or pre-paid cards. This system gives the consumer the option to authorise intermediaries to connect mobile calls that meet their compensation demand.

Source: The Hindu Business Line