India requires caller-ID apps to share spam reports with telecom operators

India's Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) amended rules on commercial communications on Friday, making it mandatory for caller-ID and call-management apps that let users flag calls as spam to forward those reports to a blockchain-based platform maintained by telecom operators. The platform tracks commercial communications and enforces anti-spam rules. TRAI said the goal is to widen the pool of spam reports available for action against spammers.

Stockholm-based Truecaller, for which India is the largest market with more than 350 million of its over 500 million global monthly active users, told TechCrunch it views the requirement as a "one-way exchange" that is anti-competitive, since it transfers commercially valuable data from apps like itself to telecom operators. According to a February report from Truecaller, users in India encountered around 42 billion spam calls in 2025, of which nearly 12 billion were blocked.

The new rules also retain an existing restriction barring apps from automatically labeling calls from certain government-designated number ranges — used for promotional, service, and transactional communications — as spam, or blanket blocking them, though individual users can still block such calls themselves.

Policy experts note it remains unclear exactly how much data apps must share, how user consent will be handled, and how that data may be retained or used afterward. TRAI did not respond to questions about whether the requirement would also apply to spam-reporting features built into smartphone operating systems like Android and iOS.

New rules for AI-powered calls

The amendments also bring automated and AI voice agent calls under TRAI's application-to-person (A2P) framework. Companies must declare in advance to their telecom operators that they use such automated calling systems and which phone numbers are involved; undeclared A2P calls will be treated as spam. Telecom operators will be allowed to charge up to 5 paise per minute for A2P calls, with certain designated number ranges exempted.