Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal writes to other telcos urging them to share data on spam calls: Report

The report states that Vittal suggested sharing details of corporate connections used for commercial calling, in a bid to monitor and prevent the misuse of such connections.

Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal has written to the heads of rival companies -- Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Tata Teleservices -- in a bid to join forces to combat spam commercial calls, according to a report in The Economic Times.

The report states that Vittal suggested sharing details of corporate connections used for commercial calling, in order to monitor and prevent the misuse of such connections. The telecom department (DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have urged the companies to collaborate to find a solution for this problem.

In a letter accessed by ET, Vittal suggested that the companies share the monthly data in a set template to monitor and prevent the misuse of these connections. “We are ready to take the first step and share the data (entity name and active numbers only) in the same template on a monthly basis and we would appreciate your support,” Vittal said in the letter.

The report said that the industry has historically been wary of sharing details as it could financially impact the businesses, but spam and phishing has reached such alarming proportions that the industry is struggling to find ways to curb the nuisance.

Around 1.5-1.7 billion commercial messages are sent every day In India, taking the total to about 55 billion every month, the report quoted industry data.

The government recently directed the operators to disconnect entities using bulk connections to engage in such activity and TRAI asked these telcos to share information on blacklisted entities with each other, so that such entities don’t switch from one operator to another.

“As the telecom industry continues to face the growing challenge of UCC, it has become clear that despite ongoing efforts, more robust and unified mechanisms are required to protect our customers from this persistent issue,” ET quoted Vittal's letter, which was also marked to TRAI chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti and DoT secretary Neeraj Mittal.

“Today, enterprise customers are served by multiple operators, and we are seized of the fact that any independent effort to address spam may not be in the best interests of customers, as it may impact the quality and continuity of services,” Vittal added.

In its efforts to check spam, so far 10 million mobile connections have been severed. Around 3,50,000 unused or unverified SMS headers and 1.2 million content templates have been blocked, ET reported.