The new Telecom Bill 2023 recently passed and as per the bill, the telcos do not have to display the caller ID to the receiver of the call. In the earlier draft of the bill, the govt had mentioned that the CNAP (Calling Name Presentation) would be a mandatory feature that the telcos would have to implement. Currently, if anyone wishes to know the caller ID when they receive a call, they use Truecaller in India. But Truecaller currently crowdsources data and it can be accurate or it can be wrong.
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However, the CNAP system that the govt was asking the telcos to implement would have shown registered user names in the company database. While it had merits, there were more demerits because of which the govt didn't include the provision in the final draft of the bill which passed in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
Telcos had warned that the feature would not be in the best interest of the consumers or the companies themselves. Some users would not want their names to be displayed when calling others with sensitive information. Further, the telcos would have to invest more in infrastructure to implement this system. Also, it would have increased the call setup time for the users resulting in dissatisfaction for the caller.
Truecaller would be happy to look at the final draft of the telecom bill. However, even Truecaller would now have to make some changes to its business. As per the DPDP Act, the companies will now have to get permission from the users to use their data. Thus, Truecaller will also be affected due to this as it currently only crowdsources the data.
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TRAI has been consulting to implement the CNAP system. However, the government is not too keen about it anymore.
