Decoding New Calling Regulations of 140 & 160 Calling

With the rise of spam calls and fraudulent transactions, businesses and consumers are at risk like never before. To tackle this growing challenge, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has introduced the 140 and 160 phone number series, enabling companies (operating under 140 and 160 phone number series) to contact consumers while protecting those who have opted for partial or complete Do Not Disturb (DND).

Recently, we at Exotel conducted a webinar and a podcast addressing this and decoded the calling regulations of 140 & 160 number series. You can view the on-demand webinar here. 

TRAI also released a consultation paper requesting any interested parties to respond with their view to remove any frictions in the current regulations and adopt a much improved version of TCCCPR without diluting the need for consumer protection and stopping the SPAM. The complete details of all the responses from different groups – associations, business, Telco’s, Telemarketers, UL VNO operators can be referred to in this link. 

Along with the webinar, we have listed a few frequently asked questions that will help you get the answers you are looking for and tried to provide a brief summary of the responses to the consultation paper from TRAI.

Some insights summary of views received as part of the consultation paper: 

• Most telecom operators have highlighted that spam and phishing attempts through OTT channels have been contributing to financial fraud. Therefore, they suggest that OTT platforms should also be covered under these regulations.
• Most telecom operators argued that financial disincentives (penalties) for telecom operators may not be the right approach. Instead, financial disincentives should be directed toward PEs/TMs who commit violations. 
• Consultation paper categorically asked if explicit Consent be made mandatory for receiving Promotional Communications by Auto Dialer or Robo Calls? – Most Telco. TM believe that explicit consent should not be made mandatory.

There were proposals to control the SPAM by establishing differential rates (Higher for promotional SMS and calls). There was no consensus among the participants and we may have to await final guidelines for TRAI post consideration of all views from different stakeholders.

Many stakeholders suggested that the SPAM originated from SIM banks or by individual SIM cards purchased by users for personal use are the core issue. These SIM cards are easily used for financial fraud calls and messages. Hence, a stringent control mechanism including number of SIM cards allowed per user were suggested by few of the associations.

There were recommendations from a few stakeholders to consider KYC completion calls, on-boarding calls, and Welcome calls as a separate category.

Few of the organizations presented that the consent obtained on website, during purchase of a product etc. (Outside the Digital consent mechanism on DLT) should also be considered as valid proof. This included the view that consumers should have the choice to provide consent and not just on the DLT platform. 

On our part, we strongly represented the need to consider “Debt collection” calls as a separate category. Our representation was as below:

Customers view – Lenders / PE believe that they have the right to collect loans provided to end consumers. Use of the 140 number will block calls to consumers who have opted out. At the same time, using normal numbers leads to DND complaints. Is there a redress mechanism? What are the views on such a use case?

We certainly appreciate that the regulator is trying to protect consumer interest and bring down fraud and SPAM.

In continuation to the webinar, we found the following few queries were repetitive and industries were concerned about the business impact.

Key Industry Concerns and FAQs from Our Webinar

Debt Collection: 

As mentioned above, debt collection calls are likely to have more DND complaints and using 140 numbers may further reduce the pick up rates and lead to financial losses. 

Impact of 160 on the Banking industry: 

Currently 160 number calling and its final directions are yet to be released by TRAI. TRAI along with SEBI, RBI has formed a JCR – Joint committee of regulators to discuss the needs of the industry and institutions. We may have to wait for the final version of the recommendations. As mentioned in our earlier blog of 160 – it’s a complex decision and network design to achieve the objectives of 160 which includes inbound and outbound calls, SMS etc. and ensuring no one is able to impersonate the number. You can refer to the 160 blog here. 

Is it going to also affect healthcare and other industries? 

TRAI has already defined 8 different industries as part of the TCCPR guidelines –

1. Banking/Insurance /Financial products/ credit cards 

2. Real Estate 

3. Education

4. Health

5. Consumer Goods and automobile

6. Communication/Broadcasting/ Entertainment/IT

7. Tourism and Leisure 

8. Food and Beverages 

In fact, we believe that almost all B2C, D2C organizations with probably an exception of B2B business/industries will have either direct or indirect impact. The extent of impact and solutioning will depend on call volumes, use case and complexity of the product/services offered by the organization.

Our current recommendations are to await the final guidelines and directions from TRAI post the consultation paper. That said, if you are a promotion heavy use case and are receiving a lot of DND complaints, we request adopting 140 number based calling to avoid service disruption by Telcos.

For other use cases with no DND complaint, you may continue to use SDCA (City / Normal number) for outbound calling. For inbound calls, you can use either Toll free number or SDCA (City / Normal number). For reaching out to international consumers, you can use SDCA (City / Normal number).

For any specific solutioning, use case specific discussions etc., please reach out to our teams and we will be more than happy to help you with different solutions.