DoT issues new international calling regulation

This action aims to provide consumer protection for Indians who may be victimized by foreign scammers using improper CLI.

The Department of Telecommunications(DoT) has developed a new regulation, for foreign calls that Indian customers receive, mandating that all calls with no or improper caller line identification should be dropped by the International Long Distance Operators (ILDOs) at their gateways.

DoT has modified the section in the unified license for TSPs (telecom service providers) that requires ILDOs to prevent any international call with or without erroneous caller line identification(CLI) from getting through to the end user.

This action aims to provide consumer protection for Indians who may be victimized by foreign scammers using improper CLI. All such calls must be terminated by the International Long Distance Operators (ILDOs) at their gateways preventing them from reaching the receivers. The regulation will take effect on August 1st, 2022.

The existing provision permitted the ILD operator to assign a two-digit carrier identification code followed by the country code from where the connection was being initiated in the event that an international call to India had an incorrect CLI.

The modified mandate was published by the department of Telecom on its website on July 6, and previously stated, it will take effect on August 1 in order to allow TSPs some time to incorporate this mandate into their structure.