India's telecom regulator has introduced a new rule affecting how spam calls are tracked and reported. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, known as TRAI, amended its rules for commercial communications on Friday.
The change requires caller-ID and call-management apps to share user spam reports with telecom operators. These reports must go to a blockchain-based platform that the telecom industry uses to track and act on spam.
TRAI said the goal is to widen the pool of spam data available for enforcement. This would connect reports collected by apps directly with the telecom industry's systems.
Truecaller, a major caller-ID app maker, pushed back against the rule. The company told reporters it views the requirement as a one-way exchange.
Truecaller Pushes Back On New Rule
Truecaller argues the rule transfers commercially valuable data from apps like itself to telecom operators without much in return. The company called the arrangement anti-competitive.
India is Truecaller's biggest market. The company has more than 500 million monthly active users worldwide, and over 350 million of them are in India.
Truecaller uses community spam reports along with automated detection to flag unwanted calls. In a report from February, the company said users in India faced around 42 billion spam calls in 2025.
Of those, Truecaller said it blocked nearly 12 billion calls during the year. The company has clashed with the regulator before over how spam calls should be classified.
Truecaller previously objected to rules stopping it from automatically labeling calls from certain government-designated number ranges as spam. It argued this exemption let unwanted calls slip through its filters.
The new amendments keep that restriction in place. Call-management apps still cannot block or tag calls from number ranges used for promotional or transactional messages.
Individual users can still block those calls themselves on their own devices. A Truecaller spokesperson said the company has followed the existing rule since late last year, despite disagreeing with it.
Policy experts say the update raises questions about enforcement. Sumeysh Srivastava, a partner at The Quantum Hub, said the rule connects two separate systems, the telecom network layer and the apps that run on top of it.
It remains unclear what reporting standards apps must follow. It is also unclear how the rule will be enforced against companies that are not telecom operators themselves.
New Rules Target AI Voice Calls
The amendments also cover automated and AI-generated voice calls. Any call placed without a person directly dialing the number will now fall under TRAI's application-to-person framework.
This includes robocalls and calls using prerecorded or artificial voices. Companies using these systems must now declare their use and phone numbers to telecom operators ahead of time.
Any undeclared automated calls will be treated as spam. Srivastava said the key factor is how a call starts, not simply whether it uses an AI voice.
Telecom operators will be allowed to charge up to 5 paise per minute on these automated calls. Calls from certain designated number ranges will be exempt from this charge.
Rizvi, from the policy group The Dialogue, said the new definition could also apply to calls where a person is involved but software initiates the process. He said this includes contact centers and click-to-call services.
TRAI did not respond to questions about whether the rule would apply to spam features built into phone operating systems like Android and iOS.
