India forces caller-ID apps to feed spam reports to telcos

TRAI amends rules to require spam report sharing

India's Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) amended rules governing commercial communications, making it mandatory for caller-ID and call-management apps that let users flag calls as spam or junk to send those reports to a blockchain-based platform maintained by telecom operators. The platform tracks commercial communications and enforces anti-spam rules. TRAI said the change is intended to broaden the pool of spam reports available for action against spammers, connecting reports collected by apps with the telecom industry's enforcement infrastructure.

Truecaller told TechCrunch that it sees this requirement as a "one-way exchange" that is "anti-competitive," arguing that it transfers commercially valuable data from call-management apps like itself to telecom operators.

Truecaller's position

• India is Truecaller's largest market, accounting for well over 350 million of its more than 500 million monthly active users globally.
• The Stockholm-based company uses community reports alongside automated detection and other signals to identify and block spam calls.
• In February, Truecaller reported its users in India encountered around 42 billion spam calls in 2025, including calls that were blocked, labeled, or ignored, and blocked nearly 12 billion spam calls during the year.
• A Truecaller spokesperson said: "While our data and user sentiment clearly show that spam has skyrocketed due to this free pass to spammers, we have been compliant with this since late last year."

Previous conflict

The Swedish company previously objected to restrictions preventing call-management apps from automatically labeling calls from certain government-designated number ranges as spam, arguing the exemption could allow unwanted calls to escape its filters. Friday's amendments retain that restriction and have barred call-management apps from blanket blocking, filtering, or spam-tagging calls from designated number series used for promotional, service, and transactional communications. Individual users can still choose to block such calls on their own devices, the regulator said.

Expert analysis on enforcement and scope

• Sumeysh Srivastava, partner at The Quantum Hub, said the change bridges two distinct layers: telecom operators provide the underlying network and run the blockchain-based anti-spam system, while caller-ID apps operate on top of the network. He raised technical and jurisdictional questions, including what reporting standards apps will have to follow and how the requirement will be enforced against companies that are not themselves telecom operators.
• A March draft proposed (PDF) using India's IT laws to enforce the requirement, but the new announcement did not say whether that enforcement mechanism was retained.
• Kazim Rizvi, founding director of The Dialogue, said requiring an app to transmit a specific spam report made by a user is materially different from requiring it to share broader datasets, reputation signals, or analytical systems. He called for clarity on what information must be transmitted, how users are notified or asked for consent, and how that data can subsequently be retained and used.
• TRAI did not respond to TechCrunch's questions about what information apps would be required to share and whether the rule would also apply to spam-reporting features built into smartphone operating systems and dialers such as Android and iOS.

New rules for AI-powered calls

The amendments also address the growing use of software and AI voice agents to make calls. Calls made automatically, without a person directly dialing the number, will now fall under TRAI's application-to-person (A2P) framework, including robocalls and calls using prerecorded or artificial voices. Companies using such systems will have to declare their use and the phone numbers involved to their telecom operators in advance. Undeclared A2P calls will be treated as spam.

• Satya N. Gupta, former additional secretary at TRAI, said the new rules do not restrict businesses from using AI or other automated calling technologies, but instead require them to disclose their use to telecom operators. Telecom operators will also be allowed to levy a termination charge of up to 5 paise (about 0.052 cents) per minute on A2P calls, though calls made using certain designated number ranges will be exempt.
• Rizvi told TechCrunch that the new definition could also cover calls made using software even when a person is still involved, such as calls from contact centers and click-to-call services. "Without that distinction, the A2P category risks becoming broader than the regulatory harm it is intended to address," he said.
• Srivastava noted the key test is how a call is initiated, rather than simply whether it uses an AI-generated voice, leaving some uncertainty around AI-assisted calls that involve human initiation.