Four months after National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) was launched in India, mobile subscribers are daily being flooded with spam messages, despite registering their number on the NDNC website.

 

While service providers promise relief from unwanted calls and messages within 7-10 days of registering one’s number on the operator website, the relief is only temporary. Looking to put an end to these troubles, DoT has declared that it will announce a dedicated landline number series which will help to identify telemarketers within a month.

 

According to a PTI report, a senior telecom ministry official was quoted as saying, “The DoT has sorted the issue to allot the number series for landline consumers with the security agencies. Now it’s a matter of another one month that consumers will get much needed relief from the unsolicited calls and SMSes.”

 

TRAI had asked DoT earlier to allocate an easily identifiable number series for telemarketing companies – for mobile and landline numbers separately. The ruling on NDNC was postponed three times due to the delay in the number series for fixed lines. Finally, in February this year, NDNC was opened and ‘140’ was the series allotted to mobile services. The number series for fixed line identification is yet to be released by DoT, which is now promising the same within a month’s time.

 

Looking at bringing some relief to customers ahead of DoT’s number series release, Netcore Solutions, a provider of digital marketing solutions, has launched ’90 ml’. This mobile-based technology by Netcore provides a 90-days mobile linkage between the organization and the consumer. Thus, this solution identifies companies which have engaged in communication via sms in the past 90 days, which is helpful for consumers to track down pesky telemarketers. For telemarketers, this solution is helpful in identifying interested customers whom they have been in touch with during the 90-day period, and only target them. This solution is said to be better than the earlier method when telemarketers only had an option for blast-in data base, the accuracy of which could never be ascertained.

 

In the past, Just Dial had also released an sms to its mobile customer database stating that it would stop forwarding telemarketer’s smses or directing calls from the same to customers, unless customers logged on the particular service website and asked them to send smses. However, after the initial one month, the spam smses from various telemarketers are back.

 

By Beryl M
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