Telcos may have to share data to curb pesky messages

The telecom regulator's latest directive for digital consent collection as part of its efforts to curb pesky and fraud messages to customers will require telecom operators to share data among them for it to be effective, industry executives said. Also, the scale of consent collection is huge and may require more time than Trai has allowed.

Digital consent acquisition was part of the regulator's original mandate asking telcos to move commercial messaging onto a blockchain-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, the executives said.

"Blockchain-based solutions require participation of all stakeholders and so will require handshake between the (telecom) operators to share the consent collected and ensure it is registered across all service providers," a senior executive with a leading telco said.

As part of Trai's mandate, telcos were asked to move all commercial messaging (one-time passwords, promotional messages, account balance updates, etc.) to the DLT platform.

Trai's latest directive gives telcos until July 31 to develop and deploy a digital consent acquisition facility. The telcos also need to provide a facility to the customers to revoke their consent.

"There are thousands of registered entities, and they have millions of customers. Getting consent from each one of these is a huge exercise and that is where the industry may see some challenge," said another telecom executive.