National Do Not Call Registry

Finally some relief for the Indian telephone subscribers as the DNC(Do-Not-Call) Registry takes off. According to the communication issued by TRAI, the whole framework will be actionized in three phases. In phase 1 the telemarketer will have to register with the system, wherein they will have to fill up an application form TM-I and submit it electronically. Subsequently, they will have to submit the same application form to the service providers. More details can be got here

In the second phase, any subscriber(mobile/Landline) can add their names to the registry through their service provider and this will take a maximum of 45 days to get activated.

In the third and final phase, the telemarketers will have to get their calling list scrubbed by the NDC registry( maintained by National Informatics Centre) and calls will be allowed to those numbers which will be cleared by the registry.

According to the news on Hindu

“As on September 7, about 14,750 telemarketers having around 4.5-lakh telephone lines have already applied with various telecom service providers for getting themselves registered with the DoT.”

The Registry can be accessed here

This initiative is a welcome step in providing a dedicated and centralized repository for all those who do not want to get unsolicited marketing calls. Earlier the NDC used to be maintained by the individual telemarketer. For eg:, ICICI Bank had its own database of people who do not want to get promotional calls. But there was the pain of going to each and every such orgn and registering at their website and to add to it, you would still get calls, flauting the rules set up by RBI on this.

Lets now hope for the best and pray that this initiative will really serve its purpose.