• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) announced a pilot project for digital consent management in coordination with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

• This initiative, announced on June 16, 2025, aims to establish a robust digital consent management framework under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018.

What is the significance of this project?

• TRAI has observed that a large number of spam complaints are made by the customers against the business entities from whom the consumers have earlier purchased goods or services. 

• On investigation, such business entities often claim that they possess the consent of the consumer for receiving commercial calls and messages.

• Under the regulatory framework defined by TCCCPR, 2018, an entity can make commercial communications to a consumer irrespective of his/her Do Not Disturb (DND) preferences provided the entity has taken explicit consent from the consumer. 

• However, in many cases, these consents were collected through offline or unverifiable means, making it extremely difficult to ascertain their validity and genuineness. 

• In several instances, consumers report that their mobile numbers have been acquired by the entities for this purpose through misrepresentation, deception, or unauthorised data-sharing practices.

• TRAI has undertaken several innovative regulatory measures in recent years to curb such practices. 

• These include allowing consumers to register complaints against unregistered telemarketers (UTMs) even without prior DND registration, and initiating large-scale disconnection of telecom resources being misused by the entities for spamming activities. 

• However, verification of consent for commercial communication citing offline consent of consumers, remains a formidable challenge.

• To address the issue, the regulations provide for acquiring consent digitally by the entities and registering them in a secure and interoperable digital consent registry maintained by the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for easy verification of consents while commercial communication is made to the consumers. 

• However, for successful operation of this consent registration framework, onboarding of entities sending commercial communications is a necessary requirement.

• Accordingly, TRAI has launched a pilot project in coordination with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) involving select banks and has issued a direction on June 13, 2025, to all the Telecom Service Providers, mandating them to pilot this framework in collaboration with banks. 

• Given the sensitivity of banking transactions and cases of financial frauds through spam calls, the banking sector has been prioritised for the first phase of implementation. 

• This pilot, running under a Regulatory Sandbox framework, will validate the operational, technical, and regulatory aspects of the enhanced Consent Registration Function (CRF) and lay the foundation for sector-wise scaling of the digital consent ecosystem.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)