Telcos seek paid route for spam calls

TELECOM OPERATORS HAVE urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to segregate personal calls from bulk commercial traffic and introduce charges for the latter, arguing that the absence of termination costs has made spam cheap and scalable.At present, call termination charges are zero, with personal and bulk calls often using the same interconnection routes.

- OJASVI GUPTA

In submissions to the regulator, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have said the current interconnection framework treats person-to-person (P2P) communication and application-to-person (A2P) traffic alike, despite sharp differences in volume, intent and risk. They have contended that this design, originally meant for individuals calling each o