Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

To tackle the problem of pesky calls and spam messages, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm will be rolling out a blockchain based technology, reported ET Telecom. This new technology would help millions of consumers in tackling pesky calls and messages, which often become a reason of nuisance for the subscribers. Analysts are also of the opinion that this would be the biggest use case of blockchain until now in the teelcom space. While Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio would implement these through partnerships with Tanla Solutions and Tech Mahindra, Bharti Airtel already has a similar deployment under way in a partnership with IBM.

Trai Mandate Urging Telcos to Use Blockchain Comes into Play
This new move is being undertaken in line with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s regulations which are expected to come into play by the end of this month. These regulations are also expected to affect approximately a billion mobile subscribers, and they would help the subscribers from unsolicited commercial communication, or spam calls and messages.
It is also worth noting that the massive blockchain deployment from the telcos will allow the users to manage and set their communication preferences and consents. To make this happen, Vodafone Idea has forged a multi-year contract with Tanla Solutions to deploy the technology, along with a regulatory sandbox and production platform. A Tanla spokesperson also said that the deployment is currently underway and added that the company is also a vendor to Bharti Airtel and is helping it in implementation of the network, however, IBM remains the bigger vendor of the two.