Regulators
India’s spam cop tightens the screws on Truecaller, telcos and phone makers
TRAI’s sweeping new anti-spam rules rope in app developers and handset giants, slap fresh penalties on errant operators and give spammers five days to plead their case before the axe falls
NEW DELHI: India’s telecom regulator has drawn up its most muscular assault yet on the country’s spam epidemic, dragging call-management apps, smartphone makers and telecom operators into a tightened web of obligations that could redraw how the country’s 1.4 billion mobile users are pestered or protected.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on March 13th released draft amendments to its Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, inviting stakeholder comments by April 12th and counter-comments by April 27th. The scale of what is proposed is striking.
Apps and handsets in the crosshairs
For the first time, TRAI is explicitly targeting third-party spam-filtering apps such as Truecaller, phone-dialler applications and the built-in spam-blocking features baked into handsets by Google, Samsung and others. Under the proposals, spam reports submitted through these apps or directly to phone makers must be routed to telecom operators’ distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms so they can be treated as formal complaints and trigger action against spammers.
The numbers make clear why the regulator is moving: in 2025 alone, Truecaller identified over 4,168 crore spam calls and 12,903 crore spam messages in India, with the community blocking 1,189 crore spam calls for Indians.
Apps that drag their feet face serious consequences. They could receive regulatory warnings, be declared non-compliant or, most damagingly, lose their intermediary liability protections under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
There is also a pointed restriction: apps must not tag, block or filter calls originating from the 140 and 1600 number series, which are reserved for registered telemarketers, service calls and official communications.
Operators bear the heaviest load
Telecom operators face expanded duties to detect, investigate and act against spam. AI-based systems must be deployed to identify suspected spam activity and verify the identity and usage of telecom resources by anyone flagged by such systems. If suspicious activity recurs, operators may need to conduct physical verification and suspend or disconnect the relevant telecom resources.
TRAI has also proposed additional charges to deter operators from turning a blind eye to bulk spam. A maximum termination charge of 5 paise per minute will apply to robocalls originating from numbers outside the 1400 or 1600 series, payable by the operator on whose network the call originates to the receiving carrier.
Operators must additionally carry out deeper validation of message templates before accepting commercial traffic from senders, and must designate a senior management employee as appellate authority to handle consumer complaints.
Timelines tightened, loopholes closed
The new rules extend the window for operators to examine call detail records when verifying a spam complaint, from one business day to two. The time limit to check for other complaints against the same sender has been stretched from two business hours to a full business day.
Networks will be required to share intelligence on AI-flagged spam numbers with each other within two hours. Once an investigation is initiated, the sender gets five business days to make their case before telecom resources are suspended or disconnected.
Consumer rights get attention too. A 15-day window is introduced for users to appeal an unsatisfactorily resolved complaint; the operator’s designated appellate authority must then resolve it within a further 15 days.
Businesses must come clean
For businesses and telemarketers, compliance tightens significantly. They must pre-declare whether they use automated application-to-person messaging, and failing to do so exposes them to operator action. Registered details, headers and templates must be verified annually to avoid automatic suspension.
If credentials are misused, businesses must act fast: reset credentials within 24 hours and report to law enforcement within two days. TRAI has also closed the old “inquiry loophole” that had allowed companies to send promotional messages under the guise of responding to a customer query. Explicit consent is now mandatory.
Penalties for telemarketers are blunt: first-time offenders lose access to their numbers for 15 days; repeat offenders face a year-long disconnection, blacklisting, device blocking, and must pay at least half the total restoration cost to have numbers reinstated.
The bottom line
India has long had the infrastructure to fight spam. What it has lacked is the reach, stopping at the telecom operator’s gate while millions of complaints piled up in apps and handsets, never feeding back into any formal enforcement system. TRAI’s draft amendments seek to fix that plumbing. If they survive the stakeholder gauntlet intact, Truecaller and its peers will no longer be mere spam detectors. They will be compelled participants in stamping it out.
I&B Ministry
India turns up the heat on piracy, orders Telegram to axe 3,142 channels and blocks 800 websites
New legal teeth, nodal officers and notices to intermediaries signal that the government is done playing nice with copyright thieves
NEW DELHI: India’s war on film piracy just got significantly more aggressive. The government has ordered Telegram to remove 3,142 channels distributing pirated content, blocked access to around 800 websites through internet service providers, and put the full weight of freshly sharpened legislation behind the crackdown. The message from New Delhi is unambiguous: the free ride for copyright thieves is over.
Minister of state for information and broadcasting L. Murugan spelled out the legal architecture to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The Cinematograph (Amendment) Act, 2023, he said, now contains specific provisions designed to make piracy a genuinely painful proposition. Sections 6AA and 6AB prohibit unauthorised recording and transmission of films, with violations attracting a minimum of three months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 3 lakh. At the upper end, offenders face three years behind bars and fines of up to 5 per cent of a film’s audited gross production cost — a figure that, for a big-budget production, could run into crores.
The legislation also gives the government powers to act against intermediaries hosting infringing content, by notifying them under Section 79(3) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and compelling takedowns and blocking actions. Under Section 79(3)(b), intermediaries are legally required to remove or disable access to unlawful content upon receiving government notice or court orders. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, add a further layer of obligation, requiring platforms to ensure their services are not used to host or distribute content that violates copyright or proprietary rights.
To put enforcement into practice, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has established a dedicated institutional mechanism, complete with nodal officers to receive complaints. Copyright holders, authorised representatives or individuals can report piracy through a prescribed format, after which the government issues notices to intermediaries to disable access to infringing links.
The most headline-grabbing action came on 11 March 2026, when Telegram was formally notified under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act and directed to remove and disable 3,142 channels found to be distributing unauthorised content belonging to OTT platforms, content owners and producers. The complaints that triggered the action came from OTT platforms including JioCinema and Amazon Prime Video, which alleged that copyrighted films, web series and other material were being shared on the platform on a massive scale. Telegram’s architecture, with its large file-sharing limits and capacity for user anonymity, has made it a favoured vehicle for exactly this kind of large-scale piracy.
The Telegram action sits within a broader pattern of escalating enforcement. Just days before the Lok Sabha statement, the ministry banned five OTT platforms for streaming obscene content: MoodXVIP, Koyal Playpro, Digi Movieplex, Feel and Jugnu. In July 2025, the Centre ordered the blocking of 25 OTT platforms accused of streaming obscene, vulgar or pornographic material, a list that included ALTT, ULLU, Big Shots App, Desiflix, Boomex, Navarasa Lite, Gulab App, Kangan App, Bull App, Jalva App, ShowHit, Wow Entertainment, Look Entertainment, Hitprime, Feneo, ShowX, Sol Talkies, Adda TV, HotX VIP, Hulchul App, MoodX, NeonX VIP, Fugi, Mojflix and Triflicks.
Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, provides the regulatory hook for those actions, prohibiting platforms from hosting content that is obscene, pornographic, invasive of privacy, gender-harassing, racially or ethnically objectionable, or that promotes hatred and violence.
For an industry that loses billions of rupees annually to piracy, the direction of travel is welcome. The question, as always, is not whether the laws exist, but whether the enforcement machinery can keep pace with the ingenuity of those determined to circumvent it. Three thousand channels down, and the pirates are already busy opening three thousand more.
