Indian call centres, the scourge of anyone who has tried to have dinner or watch TV in the evening in peace, are now facing a clampdown in their own backyard with the launch of a comprehensive ‘do-not-call’ scheme.
The country first introduced a do-not-call registry in June 2007 but three years later it was suspended, because telemarketers had shifted from voice calls to SMS. A large number of subscribers did not enrol in the registry because they found the procedures tedious, the Indian telecom regulator admitted.
A boom in India’s economy has seen a surge in telemarketers offering a variety of services ranging from finance and insurance to real-estate and holiday packages. The number of phone subscribers has also been growing fast, and was at 886 million at the end of June, of which mobile subscribers accounted for 852 million.
The new rules, called The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations 2010, come into effect at the end of this month and include stiffer penalties, designed to prevent both unsolicited telemarketing calls and SMS. Service providers have also been made responsible for unsolicited telemarketing calls and SMS that originate from their networks.
Customers can now register to be fully blocked from receiving telemarketing calls and SMS, or be partially blocked and receive promotional SMS only in their specific areas of interest, according to the new rules.
