Who Will Bell the Cat?

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At times, the two warring telecom bodies-the Cellular Operator's Association of India and the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India-join hands to fight out a common issue. This time they want TRAI to scrap the recent amendment, which would allow the government to impose penalty on service providers for unsolicited commercial calls made by telemarketing agencies.

Service providers feel this is unfair to the telecom industry as mobile service providers don't have any control over telemarketing agencies. In this context, who is responsible for unsolicited calls made by telemarketing agencies?

The proposed amendment has the potential to curb the exponential growth of the $240 mn telemarketing industry that generates more than 10 bn calls a year. The government should stay away from any decision that hurts the telecom industry, which is looking at 500 mn mobile users by 2010.

With a large number of subscribers opting for 'Do Not Call' registry, telemarketers will be forced to look for wider options to engage the customer. One of the options may be offering money to the customer to receive calls. The other solution may be the use of contextual marketing, whereby the telemarketer identifies the buying habits of the user and makes calls based on their habits.

It is heartening to note that only about 13,600 telemarketers have registered with service providers out of an estimated 75,000, despite efforts by operators and the government. The government should address the poor compliance by telemarketers and their concerned institutions like banks, credit card agencies, hotels and travel agencies, among others. The telecom regulator and service providers should strengthen the initiatives to reach out to more telemarketing agencies to register themselves.

Though the end consumer is not happy to receive unsolicited calls from anybody, the business that runs on telemarketing should not suffer. Any move to penalize the service provider, that too not for their fault, will affect the business of corporates such as McDonalds, ICICI, Birla Sunlife, etc.

According to TRAI, the telecom operator will be liable to pay Rs 5,000 for the first non-compliance of the Telecom UCC Regulations, 2007, and in case of second or subsequent such non-compliances, Rs 20,000 will be charged for each such non-compliance. The emergence of Indian manufacturing and service industry has already contributed to the growth of the Indian economy. Let them continue to thrive on the telecom growth.

Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in