Telcos race to display caller's ID on all smartphone screens

Are you inundated with spam calls? Soon, you will be able to see the caller's name flash on your phone screen without installing a third-party app like Truecaller.

- Jatin Grover

India's private telecom operators Vodafone Idea Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd have tapped vendors such as HP, Dell, Ericsson, and Nokia for servers and software needed to make this feature possible, according to three senior executives familiar with the matter.

"We are ready to implement calling name presentation (CNAP) and have ordered the equipment," an executive at one of the three telecom operators cited earlier said. The operators have conducted trials in a few circles as well.

The CNAP feature, first recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in February last year, will be rolled out in stages. Initially, it will display only the callers' names associated with a telecom operator. If a Jio subscriber calls another Jio user, the caller's name will be displayed. But not if the same subscriber calls an Airtel or Vodafone Idea user, at least till the government mandates sharing customer data between operators.