New Delhi, March 13 Callers and messaging entities engaging in fraudulent activities may lose their phone connections if their numbers are flagged through the AI spam alert service of telecom operators, even without complaints from subscribers, according to a draft proposal by the regulator, Trai, issued on Friday.
The draft Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2026, propose disconnecting all connections associated with the violator, even if they were not misused for spam calls and messages.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has proposed changes based on feedback from stakeholders during various interactions, as well as in light of recent developments such as the implementation of AI-based detection of unsolicited commercial communications (UCC) by major access providers.
Telecom operators have been claiming to have developed an effective AI-based technology to detect spam calls and messages based on caller behavior, and they warn customers to be wary of those calls before attending to them.
Trai has proposed that the telecom operator, on whose network the suspected spam communication lands, should, within two hours, share the details of the caller with the originating access provider (OAP) – the telecom firm from whose network the suspected call has originated – using blockchain technology that has been implemented for mapping spam.
The OAP will issue a notice to the suspected callers through SMS, email, or both, informing them that their number has been flagged as spam.
The OAP will need to restart the KYC process for the flagged caller within one day of receiving confirmation from the terminating access provider (TAP) on whose network the communication was made, and identify all telecom connections allocated to them.
The access provider will then need to check if another connection allocated to the suspected caller has also been flagged by the AI system of any telecom operator in the last 10 days, and share the information with other telecom operators as well.
If a suspected caller's telecom connection appears in spam alerts from other telecom operators, then those telecom operators will also need to take action against the violator.
Telecom operators will need to conduct re-verification of the suspected spammer within three business days of receiving an alert.
In the second instance of a violation or number being flagged, the OAP will need to conduct physical KYC verification of the sender to ensure that the telecom connections allocated to them are not being misused.
"If the KYC details of the sender, available with the OAP, do not match the details obtained during physical verification, or if it is found that the telecom resources are being misused by the sender for sending UCC in violation of the provisions of the regulations, all access providers will be barred from providing outgoing services, including PRI/SIP trunks, SIMs, etc., to the sender for a period of fifteen days," Trai said.
In case of any subsequent violation, the OAP would need to carry out physical KYC verification within five days, and in case of breach, all telecom connections of the spammer will have to be disconnected by all telecom operators for a period of one year, regardless of whether those telecom resources were actually used or not in making UCC.
Even the devices used for making UCC would be blocked across all telecom operators for a period of one year.
Trai said that it has also proposed some new provisions to make the regulatory framework more effective and efficient in the proposed amendment.