At a time when fraudulent calls and messages are affecting our lives, the Department of Telecommunications is keen to crack down on fraudulent calls and messages.
DoT is deactivating fraudulent numbers
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said that with the help of the Sanchar Sathi portal – which enables citizens to report suspicious numbers – over 3.5 lakh fraudulent numbers have been disconnected in the last 15 days and 'over one crore fraudulent numbers' have been disconnected so far.
Further, the Department of Telecommunications said in a post on x.com, “More than 1 crore fraudulent numbers were detected through communication partners.”
Moving forward, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has also directed To control the problem of spam calls, telecom operators are required to disconnect and blacklist entities using bulk connections for spam calls including robocalls and pre-recorded calls.
“Over 3.5 lakh such numbers have been disconnected and 50 entities have been blacklisted in the last fortnight. In addition, about 3.5 lakh unused/unverified SMS headers and 12 lakh content templates have been blocked,” the ministry said.
Further stating, “DoT has launched a citizen centric platform, Sanchar Saathi (https://sancharsaathi.gov.in) to fight cyber fraud, through which citizens can report suspicious calls and messages. With the help of Sanchar Saathi, more than one crore fraudulent mobile connections have been disconnected so far. In addition, 2.27 lakh mobile handsets have been blocked for being involved in cyber crime/financial fraud.”
Earlier, the Centre had issued directions to telecom service providers (TSPs) like Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea to block incoming international spoof calls during May.
He has made an interesting revelation that these calls appear to be coming from India, but in reality these calls are made from abroad by cyber criminals by manipulating the calling line identity.
Moving forward on this development, the Department of Telecommunications and telecom service providers informed that they have developed a system to identify and block incoming international fraudulent calls.
Strict rules to improve network performance
According to the ministry, it appears that the norms for key parameters such as network availability, call drop rate and packet drop rate are to be gradually tightened, to ensure improvement in network performance.
In this regard, TRAI has issued its revised regulations, 'Standards of Quality of Access (Wireline and Wireless) Service and Broadband (Wireline and Wireless) Services Regulations, 2024 (06 of 2024)'.
These rules will come into effect from October 1.
From April 1 next year, monitoring of quality of mobile service will start on a monthly basis instead of quarterly basis.
