Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Tuesday welcomed the government’s decision to engage with stakeholders to tackle spam and scam from Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms.

“This action by MeitY, apparently recognises the trend of the nuisance of Spam and Scam calls increasingly shifting to the OTT platforms, especially with the robust measures being undertaken for Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) by DoT along with the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) over the telecom networks,” Lt. Gen. Dr SP Kochhar, Director General at COAI.

Collaborative measures

Earlier, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) convened a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators (JCOR) on April 25 where it talked about collaborative measures to deal with unsolicited commercial communication (UCC)/ spam and fraudulent communications including on OTT and RCS communication platforms. The government said it will take measures analogues to those for conventional telecommunication.

According to Kochhar, this is an indication that applications running over networks need to be controlled by the respective line ministries, rather than appointing further consequences like penalties, etc. to the TSPs.

“The practice of concealing messages or information within other messages or objects is another issue which requires attention, as it makes the presence of the hidden message difficult to detect, thereby encouraging frauds. In this way, attackers can embed malicious code or scripts within seemingly harmless files, such as images or documents, to infect systems,” he said.

Further, he said cybersecurity measures need to be reinforced with clear outlines on spam/fraud calls and messages. The rules should govern all the necessary players, such as TSPs or OTT Communication Applications. This can be the only way to provide relief to the people from such menace.

Published on April 29, 2025