The Indian government has given its nod to introduce a separate number series for marketing calls made by enterprises or businesses for commercial purposes. Currently, for commercial purposes, a 140-number series is allocated. But in the future, it could be classified into 140 for marketing and 160/161 for service calls, according to an ET report. Customers would be able to identify the nature or the purpose of the call they are receiving. Such a move will address the spam calls that users in India face regularly.
The DoT (Department of Telecommunications) has agreed to allocate a separate series for marketing calls, according to the report. An order or a direction in this regard will arrive soon from the telecom regulatory body. Voice calls in India have become a very large channel for spamming customers as SMS can't be leveraged anymore after the implementation of the blockchain-based filtering system by the telcos.
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This has become an issue for enterprises or businesses that are making genuine calls to customers. Users generally tend to avoid the calls from numbers that start with 140 assuming it would be spam. Thus, the enterprises have to resort to personal numbers to make these calls. However, this also leaves space for fraudsters or scammers to make calls to users via personal numbers and trick them into stealing their money.
So the transactional calls will now carry the number series 160, which will help users understand that it is different from a marketing call that will start with the number series 140. It would reduce the amount of spam calls in India and would also help citizens stay safe from online scams.
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It is also worth noting that TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recently recommended the telcos implement the CNAP (caller name identification) system so that users can avoid spam or fraud calls.
