Unstoppable Rings

Despite years of warnings, fines and crackdowns, pesky calls and messages still swamp phones — exposing weak enforcement, apathy and customer frustration

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Fragmented responsibility lets telemarketers, aggregators and operators shift blame, citing regulatory complexity and accountability gaps

Old habits die hard. In India’s telecom ecosystem, they appear immortal.

For more than 15 years, subscribers have endured an unrelenting barrage of unsolicited calls and promotional messages, the modern equivalent of door-to-door hawking, but far more intrusive, because tis salesman follows you everywhere. The persistence of this nuisance — despite crackdowns, headline-grabbing fines and stern regulatory warnings ~ raises an itchy question. If the rules do exist, why do these calls not stop? The paradox is glaring. India has one of the most elaborate regulatory frameworks to curb unsolicited commercial communication. Yet, millions of customers, including those who signed up for Do Not Call (DNC) or Do Not Disturb (DND) registries, continue to report daily harassment. This is not an occasional slip. It is systemic failure masquerading as enforcement.

The arc of this saga stretches back to 2010, when industry watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) spat out tough regulations to rein in telemarketers and get telcos to take responsibility. The penalties were scary for the time; escalating fines that could result in hefty monetary punishment and outright termination of licenses. Telemarketers were required to register, operators to police their networks. India’s telecom consumers had been promised relief. But relief never arrived.