Bharti Airtel, a leading communications player in India, has been penalised by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recently. TRAI has levied a financial disincentive or in simple words, a penalty of Rs 2,81,39,000 on Airtel. The telecom operator has disclosed the information on a listing in the stock exchanges. TRAI sent the order to Airtel on September 27, 2023. The telecom regulatory body has levied a financial disincentive on Airtel because the telco couldn't curb the unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) sent on its network. UCC in simple terms is spam or unwanted messages by the customers.
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Airtel shared the details of the violation, which said, "Failure to curb the Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) sent through Company’s network for the complaints as required under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, for the quarter ended December 2021."
The telco further said that it is currently reviewing the order sent by TRAI and evaluating what should be its next steps. If the telco can't defend against the order, it will have to pay a financial disincentive of Rs 2.81 crore because it couldn't curb the UCC. TRAI and the government are very serious about reducing spam and unwanted messages for customers.
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TRAI even asked the telcos to share the data amongst themselves so that they could be aware of the spam and fraudulent messages. In India, spam messages are a big pain for the consumers. TRAI has been trying to build mechanisms where it gets hard for spam messages can be stopped. Airtel has been penalised for not being able to curb the UCC on its network for the December 2021 quarter. So it is quite an old thing and now the telcos already have a better system in place to counter UCC or spam messages on their networks.
