Trai directs telecom companies to block all unverified telemarketers

Telemarketers have to be registered on the DLT platform

To curb the ever-growing menace of pesky promotions and unauthorised advertisements by telemarketing firms spamming message inboxes, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked telecommunication service providers (TSPs) to scrub their database clean and block all unverified telemarketer accounts.

In a key move, it said entities involved in message transmission should be identifiable and tracked, if required.

On Thursday, Trai asked TSPs to re-verify all registered headers and message templates on their distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform within 30 days and block all unverified headers and message templates within 60 days.

In two separate directives, Trai said all