Trai says telcos start '1600' number series rollout for BFSI sector
NEW DELHI: The
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
(
Trai
) said that the incumbent telecom carriers have been implementing a '1600' series as a number prefix in numbers for consumers to identify calls originating from genuine banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) companies.
'Currently, we are focusing on the implementation of the 1600 series. This series has been allotted for transaction and service calls for the banking, financial and insurance (BFSI) sector,'
Anil Kumar Lahoti
, Chairman, Trai, told ETTelecom.
Further, the top official said that the 1600 series initiative in the BFSI sector will 'give a lot of credibility' to voice calls and consumers can identify it as a transactional service, and not meant for a promotional purpose.
The move comes following the sector watchdog holding multiple discussions with stakeholders, including incumbent telecom service providers.
'The work is in progress, so the number series has been given to the service providers and now the principal entities are taking the numbers from them. We have also requested the respective sectoral regulators to advise the entities regulated by them for early adoption of this system,' Lahoti said.
Some of the BFSI entities, such as the State Bank of India (SBI) Card, according to the regulator, have already started the rollout of the new number series.
Lahoti further said that the sector watchdog eventually aims to mandate all service and transaction calls routed through the new series, including those coming from large commercial entities.
'So, we have started from the BFSI sector, it will take some time to complete it, then we will take up other sectors also,' he added.
READ MORE | Telcos voice concern over Trai's new spam norms
In 2022, Trai formed a Joint Committee of Regulators (JCoR) that includes representatives from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The JCoR agreed to mandate the BFSI sector with necessary directions to prevent misuse of headers and content templates and to curb unauthorised calls using telecom resources under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018).
In April this year, the joint committee discussed the modalities for the implementation of 1600 series numbers allocated to transactional and service voice calls by the entities belonging to the government and financial sector.
The deliberations followed the onboarding of senders of commercial communication on the Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) platform.
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