TRAI makes caller-ID apps write their users' spam taps into the telcos' blockchain registry

The operators' blockchain platform is the registry that carries commercial-messaging control and the anti-spam restrictions applied against senders ^[1]. A spam tap only triggers one of those restrictions once it is written into the registry. Sumeesh Shrivastava, a partner at a consultancy, said the amendment joins two layers of the system: the operators run the network and the blockchain platform. Above that infrastructure, the apps identify and filter calls ^[10].

TRAI has yet to set which data goes to operators, how users are told, and how long it may be stored and used ^[13]. The final text also leaves open whether the enforcement route from the March draft, grounded in India's IT law, survived, and how the duty applies to companies that are not operators ^[11]. Kazim Rizvi, founder of the think tank Dialogue, separated the single user complaint from broader disclosure. That broader disclosure may take in reputation signals and the analytical systems a service uses to decide that a call is suspicious ^[12]. Shipping individual complaints is a small write path. Exporting the scoring behind them is a different product.

Truecaller builds its verdicts from community reports, automatic detection and other signals ^[5]. More than 350 million of its more than 500 million monthly active users are in India, about 70 percent of the base on the stated figures ^[4][4]. A spokesperson said, in the report's translation, that the requirement is a one-way exchange creating anti-competitive conditions, because commercially valuable data from call-management apps is transferred to telecom operators ^[3].

The company counted about 42 billion spam calls to its Indian users during 2025, a figure that includes calls blocked, marked unwanted or left unanswered ^[6]. It says it blocked close to 12 billion of them ^[7]. That is roughly 29 percent of the total ^[1], and about 120 spam calls per Indian user across the year ^[2].

The carve-out stays. Apps still may not automatically mark as spam the calls from certain government number ranges used for promotional, service and transactional traffic, although a subscriber can block them on the handset ^[8]. A Truecaller spokesperson said the company's data and user response show unwanted calls rose sharply because of this free access for spammers, and that Truecaller has been following the rule since the end of last year ^[9].

The automated-calling half is tidier drafting. A number dialled by software without direct human action falls under the app-to-subscriber rules, which now cover robocalls and pre-recorded or artificially generated voice ^[14]. Companies have to tell operators in advance that they use it and list the numbers involved, and TRAI will treat undeclared automated calls as spam ^[15]. Satya N. Gupta, a former TRAI additional secretary, said the rules do not prohibit a business from using AI or other automated dialling and only require it to disclose the use to operators ^[16]. Operators may charge up to 5 paise a minute to terminate such calls, with an exception for certain defined ranges ^[17], so twenty minutes of automated dialling costs one rupee ^[3].