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Thomas K Thomas

... from all those annoying telemarketing calls. That is what mobile subscribers can look forward to if initiatives in this regard pan out.

HOW would you like it if you got complete freedom from those high-pitched calls from telemarketers?

Calls that land at the most inconvenient moment on your mobile phone, seeking to sell credit cards, home loans and sundry items?

Better still, how would it be if you got a few lakh rupees every time you received an unsolicited call from a telemarketer?

This could soon be reality with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) embarking on an interesting debate in the next few weeks — whether to have a `National Do Not Call Registry' for mobile subscribers in the country.

The National Do Not Call Registry gives you an opportunity to limit the telemarketing calls you receive.

Once you register your phone number in the Do Not Call (DNC) list, telemarketers will be prohibited to call you by law, just like it is in the US, where close to 70 million mobile users are part of such a registry.

In fact, just last month, the US Government proposed a $770,000-fine against a mortgage company for allegedly calling people who put their telephone numbers on the federal do-not-call registry.

The registry, established in October 2003, is the US Government's attempt to safeguard personal privacy and reduce telemarketing calls.

Cutting back home, the TRAI move comes after the Supreme Court of India, on February 7, 2005, issued notices to the Central Government, all cellular operators, and MNC banks, seeking a law to ban such unsolicited calls.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology too has asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to formulate a law to counter the telemarketing menace.

The Supreme Court notice was based on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by a Dr Harsh Pathak. "Irrespective of the subscriber's location and time, amidst their professional and personal engagements, cell-phone companies and telemarketing companies keep calling the customer for their sales promotion pitch.

For products in which the subscriber may not at all be interested. This not only causes huge cost to the customer if he is using the roaming services of the mobile phone service provider, but also tantamounts to infraction of the subscriber's privacy," the PIL says.

Dr Pathak and consumer organisations are holding mobile companies and the various banking companies responsible for the menace.

"The mobile telephony service providers and telemarketers are using the personal data of the subscriber for their business purpose as a product for sales promotion, at the subscribers' personal and financial cost," says a consumer organisation.

Cellular companies, however, deny the allegations.

Manoj Kohli, president-mobility, Bharti Cellular Ltd, says, "We are a responsible corporate citizen and fully respect the privacy of the individual. We reiterate that we protect the confidentiality of the customer and do not give out the numbers of our subscribers.

In fact, we have been making representations to the regulator against publishing the directory of numbers precisely for this reason. We have even written to certain banks to refrain from approaching our customers.

Such unsolicited calls are not only a source of irritation and inconvenience to our customers but also cause network congestion besides a loss of revenue since all such calls which are incoming have a poor termination rate."

Cellular operators, in turn, put the blame on companies that use telemarketing as a tool to sell products.

"There is not much that we as operators can do about telemarketing.

It's a call between two independent entities and as operators we have to let the call through our network.

t is for the telemarketing companies to be sensitive to the consumers," says Umang Das, Managing Director, Spice Telecom.

Some operators put the ball back in the consumers' court. "Subscribers have to be careful in giving out their phone numbers.

It has come to our notice that the call centres operating for credit card companies and banks acquire the phone numbers from third parties such as contest organisers and market surveyors," says Sukanta Dey, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular.

Though mobile operators are in favour of bringing in a system like the DNC registry of the US, they say there are a number of issues that need to be discussed before its introduction.

"We do not have much precedence to the DNC registry. The US is the only country that has such a system, which was introduced after years of discussion and deliberations.

While we are prepared to do anything to protect the interest of our consumers, the stakeholders must engage in discussion before a law is enacted," says T.V. Ramachandran, Director-General, Cellular Operators Association of India, which is filing a counter affidavit to the PIL in the Supreme Court seeking to be a party in the case.

The cellular operators point to the recent case filed by the American Teleservices Association, Mainstream Marketing Services Inc and TMG Marketing Inc, arguing that the DNC list violated their commercial free-speech rights.

Consumer organisations, however, dispute mobile operators' claims.

As a case in point, they cite the Do Not Disturb campaign launched by Hutch soon after the Supreme Court notice in February.

A variant of the American DNC system, the `Do Not Disturb' campaign allowed Hutch users across the country to inform the operator about unsolicited calls they receive by sending an SMS `stop' followed by the caller's number to 123.

Once this is done, Hutch takes up the matter with organisations initiating these calls to prevent further calling from these numbers to its other subscribers.

While the company would not disclose details, insiders said that a large number of subscribers had taken advantage of the scheme.

However, the loophole in this campaign is that the tele-marketers could use another phone number to reach the same subscriber and secondly it is not enforceable by law.

"Due to the absence of law pertaining to telephone consumers and the regulatory forum the consumer can approach, the subscriber's privacy is getting vulnerable with each passing day," says Dr Pathak.

The PIL contends that the Government should formulate a scheme to safeguard the privacy of subscribers and to compensate for the loss incurred by them due to such actions of the respondent companies.

The companies that use tele-marketing as a tool are maintaining silence over the issue even as there is no let-up in calling up unsuspecting mobile subscribers.

"Businesses swear by telemarketing despite its low success rate. This is because at even a 1-2 per cent hit rate, this strategy is more cost-effective than advertising-led marketing strategies.

At Rs 3,000 per month, telemarketing executives come cheap. Add the 15-20 per cent commission involved, and still the cost of direct marketing is a pittance," reads Dr Pathak's PIL.

Like most other important decisions taken in the telecom sector in recent times, it seems this issue too will be settled in court.

Until then mobile subscribers have no choice but to put up with unwanted calls, all because they went in for a mobile phone.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

tkt@thehindu.co.in

The reader is invited to look up eWorld dated November 8, 2004 for related articles on the issue.

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