Supreme Court has issued notices to various telecom operators to stop intruding into the lives of mobile users through unsolicited calls and spam and bulk SMSes but operators have ignored these notices and continuing their interference.
A. G. Rao, Tata Teleservices Ltd's (TTSL) chief technology officer (CTO) and enterprise business head said in a statement that instead of a debating on the difference between disturbance and nuisance of a telemarketers' voice calls vis-a-vis spam e-mail or spam SMS which are causing intrusion in the personal lives of subscribers, many operators have made their nature to permit unsolicited calls made by telemarketers.
Further Rao adds that all operators should support and join hands to stop interfering and violating the user’s lives. In India bulk SMS business is worth over 250 crore annually.
Many operators sell bulk SMSes at packages at a cost of about `2,000 to `4,000 per one lakh SMS. He also recommends imposing 10 times more severe penalty on intrusive voice calls than SMS spam messages.
It is the calls that are truly causing disturbances than SMSes and should be strictly halted. With reference to sharing information, operators are permitting telemarketers and do not identify the difference between intrusiveness and disturbance.
Whereas, TTSL supports SMS marketing and said that it is completely within the regulatory provisions and possess high stakes in the bulk SMS telemarketing business.
TTSL said that if any subscriber is having any problem with unsolicited calls and SMSes then they can register complains with the Do Not Disturb (DND) registry, and most of all it is the responsibility of the operator to protect its users from any trouble.
Although DNC registry is not so popular between mobile subscribers in India and a report shows that only 11 percent i.e. seven crore of 65 crore mobile users are registered with the DNC registry. The major concern of all the mobile subscribers is that they receive unwanted call while they are travelling which is increasing their bills and many complaints have been launch against unsolicited calls and SMSes.
