The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has changed commercial communications rules, requiring caller ID and call management apps to send users’ spam or unwanted call reports to the blockchain-based platform operated by telecom operators. The platform tracks commercial communications and ensures the enforcement of anti-spam rules. TRAI said the change would expand the pool of reports that could be used to take action against spammers.
Truecaller, however, described the regulation as a “one-way” and “anti-competitive” practice that leads to commercially valuable data being transferred from call management apps to operators. India is the largest market for the Stockholm-based company; the country accounts for more than 350 million of Truecaller’s over 500 million monthly active users worldwide. The company identifies and blocks spam calls through community reports, automated detection and other signals.
According to Truecaller’s February report, users in India encountered around 42 billion spam calls in 2025, including those that were blocked, labelled or unanswered. The company said it blocked around 12 billion spam calls in the same year.
The new regulations also continue to prohibit call management apps from collectively blocking, filtering or labelling as spam promotional, service and transactional calls from certain number series. Users will be able to block these calls on their own devices. While Truecaller argues that this exception increases spam, it said it has complied with the rule since late last year.
Experts said it remains unclear which reporting standards apps will have to comply with, how the rule will be enforced on companies that are not telecom operators, and what data will be shared. The March draft proposed that the obligation be enforced under India’s IT laws; however, it was not disclosed whether this was retained in the final rules. TRAI did not respond to questions about whether spam reporting features in operating systems such as Android and iOS, as well as in calling apps, are also within scope.
The changes also include automatically made calls within the application-to-person (A2P) framework:
- Robocalls
- Pre-recorded voice calls
- Calls using artificial voices
Companies using these systems will notify telecom operators in advance of their use and the relevant numbers; unreported A2P calls will be considered spam. Operators will be able to charge a termination fee of no more than 5 paise (approximately 0.052 cents) per minute for A2P calls; calls made from certain number series will be exempt.
Why it matters
The regulation shifts the balance in favour of telecom operators regarding how user reports are collected in the fight against spam calls and who can access this data. This directly concerns Truecaller’s operations and its position regarding commercially valuable data, due to its user base and call detection systems in India. For companies making automated calls, the prior notification requirement, the classification of unreported calls as spam, and the termination fee introduce new compliance requirements. However, the boundaries of the implementation remain unclear in terms of features on Android and iOS, companies that are not operators, and the scope of data to be shared; these uncertainties leave open questions about how the rule will be enforced and through what process users’ reports will be assessed.
Background
India is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: over the last 90 days, we have published 2 news reports in which this name appeared; the latest is dated September 12, 2026.