Centre mandates caller-ID apps to share spam data with telcos
What's the story
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has amended its rules on commercial communications, now requiring caller-ID and call-management apps to share users' spam reports with telecom operators. The new rule applies to apps that allow users to mark calls as spam or junk. TRAI said the move is aimed at expanding the pool of spam reports for action against spammers, linking app-collected data with the telecom industry's enforcement system.
Industry response
Truecaller calls TRAI's requirement 'anti-competitive'
Truecaller, a leading spam-blocking app, has criticized the new requirement from TRAI.
The company called it a "one-way exchange" that is "anti-competitive," claiming it transfers commercially valuable data from call-management apps to telecom operators.
Truecaller, which has over 500 million monthly active users globally and more than 350 million in India alone, uses community reports along with automated detection to identify and block spam calls.
Regulatory measures
India struggles with spam calls
The new rules come as India struggles with a massive volume of spam and fraudulent calls.
In its February report, Truecaller revealed that its users in India received some 42 billion spam calls in 2025. The company also said it blocked nearly 12 billion spam calls during the same period.
Despite previous disagreements over how to handle spam, the latest amendments have maintained certain restrictions on call-management apps.
Ongoing restrictions
TRAI bars blanket blocking of calls
The new rules from TRAI have also barred call-management apps from blanket blocking, filtering, or spam-tagging calls from designated number series used for promotional, service, and transactional communications.
However, individual users can still choose to block such calls on their own devices.
Sumeysh Srivastava, a partner at New Delhi-based consulting firm The Quantum Hub, who leads its telecom-regulation policy work, said the latest change connects two different layers: telecom operators run the blockchain-based anti-spam system while caller-ID apps filter calls.
Implementation concerns
Questions remain on enforcement against non-telecom companies
There are still questions about how the requirement will be enforced against companies that aren't telecom operators.
A March draft suggested using India's IT laws to enforce the requirement, but it is unclear if this mechanism was retained in the final rules.
Kazim Rizvi, founding director of New Delhi-based policy think tank The Dialogue, said there is a big difference between an app transmitting a specific spam report and sharing broader datasets or analytical systems used to identify suspicious calls.
AI regulations
New rules cover AI voice agents, robocalls
The amendments also cover the use of software and AI voice agents to make calls.
These automated calls will now come under TRAI's application-to-person (A2P) framework, including robocalls and those using pre-recorded or artificial voices.
Companies using such systems will have to declare their use and the involved phone numbers to their telecom operators in advance; undeclared A2P calls will be treated as spam by TRAI.