The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had issued Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, 2007, on June 5. This had put in place a mechanism for curbing the unwanted telemarketing calls.

As per the available data with TRAI from the telecom service providers, more than 65 lakh subscribers have been registered in NDNC through their respective telecom service providers.

The NDNC registry is now ready and is going to be operationalised on October 12. Those subscribers who have registered before August 31, 2007 will not receive unsolicited commercial calls. The subscribers who have registered after August 31, 2007 will also get this benefit after a gap of forty-five days.

From October 12 onwards, no telemarketer will call the subscribers who are registered with NDNC. As per the Regulation, the telecom service providers have been directed

to charge Rs 500 or disconnect their lines as the case may be if any telemarketer calls such subscribers. Therefore, all the telemarketers who have registered with DoT are required to scrub their calling list from October 12 from NDNC website.

For getting the benefit of the NDNC registry, the subscriber will have to register his telephone number with his telecom service provider. The registration of subscribers for NDNC has already commenced. The Authority had issued an advertisement to this effect in the leading national dailies in the last week of August 7.

Subsequently, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Service Provider of India (AUSPI) have also issued advertisement in the various National Dailies requesting the subscribers to register for Do Not Call Registry.

The details of call center number/SMS number on which the registration can be done are available on the websites of respective service providers.

Aircel has received over 54,959 applications, while that of BPL stood at 58,706, BSNL at 1,57,489, Bharti AirTel [Get Quote] at 30,97,974, HFCL at 28,730 and Idea at 822,387.

State-owned telecom major MTNL [Get Quote] received 43,996 applications, while that of Reliance [Get Quote] stood at 2,01,162, Spice at 1,03,447, Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] at 3,32,609 and Vodafone received 16,19,863 applications.