Airtel has urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to take action against spam and online fraud conducted through over-the-top (OTT) platforms like WhatsApp,

Telegram

, Google Messages, Signal and others over telecom networks. According to a report by The Economic Times, the telco has written to TRAI chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti, warning of a “significant risk” that spam could shift to OTT platforms, which are increasingly being used for mainstream marketing and business communications.

What Airtel’s letter to TRAI says

The letter dated November 8 says “Spam and fraudulent messages are no longer limited to only SMS and voice. While telecom operators have tightened controls over commercial SMS and voice communication, there is a significant risk that spam will shift to OTT channels, which are not subject to any regulatory oversight, including Trai’s Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) Regulation”.
In the letter, Airtel’s chief regulatory officer, Rahul Vatts, suggested that telecom companies could help standardize a KYC process for OTT platforms. He also proposed mandating Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) scrubbing for these platforms to ensure messages adhere to the same regulatory standards used to control SMS spam.

Airtel has urged TRAI to mandate the joint implementation of a Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system through a unified channel shared by telcos and OTT platforms. This would provide mobile users with a centralized way to give or revoke consent for promotional messages, ensuring businesses cannot bypass consent on either platform, the company stated in its letter.
Airtel further highlighted that, under the current system, telecom operators have a limited role in addressing the rise of unsolicited communications, as most messaging now occurs over the internet instead of traditional SMS channels. “This gap allows spammers/scammers to exploit these channels. There is also a lack of transparency on enterprises that violate UCC Regulations, unlike telco channels where users have an option to escalate complaints to government channels,” it said.