No porting allowed within seven days of SIM card swap: TRAI
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday updated regulations to disallow telecom subscribers to port out of their current network provider if they have “swapped” their SIM card, after the loss or damage of a previous card, within the past seven days. The regulations prohibit telecom operators from issuing a “unique porting code” (UPC) which is the first step of changing providers using mobile number portability. This amendment would “result in preventing [the] porting of mobile connections soon after SIM swapping/ replacement, by fraudsters in the name of new subscribers,” the TRAI said in an explanatory memorandum.
The move is part of the antispam measures the TRAI has taken. Previous steps include creating a donotdisturb registry for subscribers to opt out of spam, releasing a nowdefunct app to enforce that registry by allowing users to file complaints against errant telemarketers, and requiring all transactional SMS messages by businesses to be as per a format registered with telecom operators, barring which they get filtered out.
The TRAI has also recommended to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) a feature that would display the legally registered name of every caller on recipients’ handsets, a feature that drew some criticism on privacy grounds. The DoT has launched Chakshu, its own portal for reporting “suspected fraud communication”.
The DoT had asked the TRAI to examine a suggestion that telecom firms be required to match the identity of subscribers when they port out from one operator to another. The TRAI said that this suggestion will be “examined separately”.