India requires Caller ID apps to share spam complaints — TechCrunch
India’s telecommunications regulator, TRAI, has amended commercial communications rules and required caller identification and call management apps to pass users’ spam complaints to telecom operators. The data must be submitted to a blockchain platform maintained by telecommunications operators to track commercial messages and enforce rules against unwanted calls.
As TechCrunch reports, TRAI said the change is intended to expand the pool of complaints available for action against spammers. The regulator is effectively integrating reports collected by third-party apps with the telecommunications industry’s infrastructure.
Truecaller’s objections
Swedish company Truecaller called the requirement a “one-way exchange” that harms competition. According to the company, operators will receive commercially valuable data from call management services. India is Truecaller’s largest market: the country accounts for more than 350 million of the service’s over 500 million monthly active users worldwide.
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Truecaller uses community reports, automated detection and other signals to identify and block unwanted calls. According to the company, in 2025 its users in India encountered about 42 billion spam calls, including those blocked, flagged or ignored. The service also said it blocked nearly 12 billion such calls during the year.
Rules for automated calls
The amendments also extend rules for application-to-person (A2P) communications to automatically initiated calls, including robocalls and calls with recorded or artificially generated voices. Companies must notify their operators in advance about the use of such systems and the relevant phone numbers. Undeclared A2P calls will be considered spam.
Operators will also be able to charge an A2P call termination fee of up to 5 paise, or about 0.052 U.S. cents, per minute. At the same time, certain designated number series will be exempt from the fee. Experts interviewed by TechCrunch pointed to the need to clarify the scope of data apps must transmit, the procedures for informing users and obtaining their consent, as well as the limits of applying the new A2P definition to contact centers and click-to-call services.
