‘` 400cr hit likely for pesky calls’

New Delhi, Aug. 3: Mobile industry body COAI on Friday raised red flag over Trai’s new rules on curbing pesky calls and messages saying tailoring of systems, and use of blockchain technology will involve ` 200- 400 crore investment and 18 months for the roll out, at a time when the sector is financiallystressed.

The COAI represents the voice of a large telecom operators in the country, all of who would be required to comply with these rules by December.

“As this system has not been implemented elsewhere in the world, it is difficult to quantify the exact investment or the time involved. But roughly, it will be in excess of ` 200- 400 crore investments for tailoring of the system,” COAI director general Rajan Mathews said.

Even the December timeline is “extremely unfeasible” for customising the system to comply the new rules, he said adding that at least 1- 1.5 years would be needed to put the full architecture in place.

On whether the increased cost of compliance will be passed on by operators to the consumers in form of higher tariffs, Mathews said that generally costs tend to get passed on but in this case it would depend entirely on market dynamics.

Trai last month came out with stringent unsolicited commercial communication rules under which an individual can revoke permission that they have granted to any commercial entity for a service.

The mandated granularity in customer preferences also permit subscribers to set preference about days and time bands on which they would like to receive commercial communications as well as indicate preferred modes of communication - call or SMS.