Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) extend the deadline on the SMS traceability guidelines for telecom operators to 10th December from 30th November 2024. This new system requires certain technical tweaks from telemarketers that involves defining principal entity (PE)-Telemarketers (TMs) chain, based on which the telecom operators will be able to trace the messages.
In absence of the same, the telemarketers will be block from sending the messages.
This new system is being introduce to curb the menace of spam messages and directly tracing the defaulters who are responsible for such unsolicited communication.
TRAI has extend the deadline after assessing the progress of PE-TM chain declaration and on request from telecom operators.
As TRAI extend the deadline to 30th November from 1st November 2024.
In a communication to TRAI, telecom operators earlier said that while they are technically ready for implementation of the traceability of messages, there can be challenges which may be face at the end of the principal entities and the telemarketers to register their complete chain on the DLT (distributed ledger technology) platform.
The same can also lead to disruption of critical messages.
TRAI said that more than 27,000 PEs have already register their chains with the respective Access Providers and further registration is in progress at a rapid pace.
As TRAI also clarify that the rules won’t cause any disruption in OTP messages.
TRAI said :
“Access Providers have sent and are continuing to send warning notices to all PEs and TMs who have not yet implemented necessary changes,”.
The regulator said with effect from 11th December 2024, any traffic (messages) where the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match with a pre-defined chain shall be reject.
As per TRAI :
“PEs and TMs are again advised to expedite the declaration of chains on priority as any message that fails to adhere to the traceability regulation will be rejected with effect from 11th of December 2024,”.
“All the Principal Entities (PE) and Telemarketers (TM) shall complete the PE-TM chain binding at the earliest to avoid disruption in the transmission of messages,”
Telecom operators have also submitting a daily progress report regarding messages that are complying to or failing to comply with the chain-binding process for traceability.
