TRAI releases consultation paper for caller ID on mobile phones

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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on November 29 released a consultation paper on ‘Introduction of Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) in Telecommunication Networks’, which deals with the tech required to display caller identification on mobile phones.

TRAI in its statement noted that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had on March 21 requested the authority to provide recommendations for the same under Section 11(1)(a) of TRAI Act, 1997 (Amended).

In this regard, a consultation paper seeking inputs from stakeholders is now on TRAl's website. The authority is taking written comments on the paper till December 27 this year, and counter comments till January 10, 2023.

“The comments or counter-comments may be sent, preferably in electronic form at advmn@trai.gov.in. For clarification or information Akhilesh Kumar Trivedi, Advisor (Networks, Spectrum and Licensing), TRAI may be contacted at +91-11-23210481,” as per the statement signed by TRAI Secretary V Raghunandan.

The move comes in a bid to “check pesky and fraud calls”, PTI reported. The tech would work similarly on mobile apps such as Truecaller and Bharat Caller ID & Anti-spam, but the TRAI paper noted that this data is crowd-sourced and may not be reliable.

The report added that DoT in its request said the facility will empower users to make informed decision while receiving calls, and reduce harassment from unknown or spam callers.

Notably, for implementation of the CNAP service in the telecom networks, it would be necessary that the service providers have access to a database which contains the correct name identity information of each telephone subscriber. In the consultation paper, TRAI is also exploring different business models for providing CNAP facilities, PTI added.