Grahakjago (S.K.Virmani)©

Whether the rules and regulations of TRAI are adequate to handle menace of telemarketing calls (Unsolicited Commercial Communication) Dear Readers, I am drawing the attention towards a recent newspaper report that has appeared in Dainik Jagran dtd. 3rd October 2013. The newspaper clipping is pasted in the post. As per the report, the telecom subscribers are suffering from the menace of telemarketing calls. The question is whether the regulations framed by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are adequate enough to restrict the telemarketers to resort to telemarketing calls and violate the regulations. I have written six articles on this blog right from 11/05/2012 onwards and have brought out the deficiencies in the regulations. The copies of such articles have been sent to TRAI. As usual, TRAI seems to be not interested in giving relief to the customers from the nuisance of telemarketing business. As whatever the deficiencies have been brought out still remains to b...

Do you feel that the latest TRAI regulations of unsolicited commercial communications is going to save you from telemarketing calls? An article : Are you still getting disturbed from Telemarketers despite strong regulations by TRAI- Why so?                     was published on this blog and the attention of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was also drawn about the problems being faced by the mobile users from telemarketing calls. We are thankful to TRAI for their intervention in making regulations further rigid. Thanks to the telemarketers who were also creating nuisance to Hon'able Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister through such telemarketing messages. However, the basic issue of unregistered telemarketers may not get addressed which is the main source of all such nuisance. Merely by increasing the cost of the SMS from 100 nos. onwards is not going to get relief to the telemarket...

This news has appeared in theNavbharat Times dtd. 31st May 2012. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is the regulatory body in the Telecom Sector. One of the objective as per TRAI Act is to protect the interest of consumers. In my view the TRAI has failed to protect the interest of consumers as is quite evident from the above news report. It is not only that there is a failure in implementation of its regulations on MNP i.e Mobile Number Portability but also several other regulations. Few of them could be "Activation of VAS (Value Added Services", Unsolicited Commercial call (UCC) and all the three regulations were meant to protect consumers from unethical business practices. TRAI itself have confirmed under RTI that 5 regulations in UCC i.e Unsolicited Commercial Communications have not been implementable as no grievance redressal mechanism has been thought of. Is it not a joke with the 100 crore consumers??? Agreed, certain steps are forgotton at the time of making reg...