TRAI ready for legal battle if telcos challenge its decision on pesky calls

NEW
DELHI: Telecom guard dog TRAI on Wednesday said it is ready for a legal conflict if
the telecom operators move the tribunal challenging its determination to impose
penalties on service suppliers for unsought phone calls to the subscribers. "There is no inquiry of
rolling back the decision. If the operators move tribunal challenging the move, we
are ready to struggle them," a TRAI functionary said here on the outs of-bounds of
Convergence India, an ICT exhibition. The telecom regulator had on
Monday said for the first unsought communication, a service supplier would
have to pay a punishment of up to Rs 5,000, which could travel up to Rs 20,000 for each
subsequent call. The telecom
operators associations yesterday strongly opposed the decision, which they said
was "unfair" and would potentially deter the service providers.

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GSM
lobby grouping COAI and CDMA operators grouping AUSPI said in a joint statement that
TRAI makes not have got the powerfulnesses to penalise operators. "The service suppliers merely
provide the bagpipe for the passenger car of the phone phone calls and cannot be held responsible
for such as pesky, nuisance calls made by the selling agencies," the statement
had said. TRAI is well aware
that there is no technological installation available which can assist the service
provider to recognize whether the phone call is from a telemarketer or is an unsolicited
commercial communication, it added. Moreover, there is no mode in
which the service supplier can guarantee that the telemarketer have scrubbed the
calling listing in an appropriate manner before making the call. The full industry is
completely discouraged by this ordinance since we have got been going out of our
way and making all possible attempts to set in a system so as to enable the
Authority's (TRAI's) UCC ordinance to be effective," it had said yesterday. TRAI, on its part, had said,
"The aim is to increase the effectivity of conformity of these
regulations by providing fiscal deterrence to non-compliant Telecom Service
Providers and thereby reducing the nuisance and incommodiousness to the subscribers
from the unsought tele-marketing calls/ messages."