NEW DELHI: In a collaborative effort, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) have deactivated over 10 million mobile connections in a crackdown drive against unwanted callers and fraudsters, according to an official release.
Additionally, the DoT has blocked 227,000 mobile handsets found to be associated with cybercrimes and financial scams.
Connections deactivated
“With the assistance of the Sancharsaathi initiative, over 1 crore fraudulent mobile connections have been deactivated. Furthermore, 2.27 lakh mobile devices involved in cybercrime or financial fraud have been blocked,” the statement noted.
To address the growing problem of spam calls, Trai has instructed telecom companies to cut off and blacklist entities misusing bulk connections for purposes such as robocalls or pre-recorded messages.
Updated regulations soon
“Over the past two weeks, more than 350,000 such numbers have been disconnected, and 50 entities have been blacklisted. Additionally, 350,000 unused and unverified SMS headers and 1.2 million content templates have been disabled,” the statement said.
Trai has also introduced updated regulations for service quality, set to take effect on October 1, 2024, with monthly monitoring of mobile service quality performance starting from April 2025, replacing the current quarterly checks.
