The regulator TRAI on Wednesday announced new norms to be followed by telemarketers with an intention to avoid the annoyance faced by mobile subscribers due to pesky calls.

Henceforth telemarketers can call only those numbers which are registered under Do-Call-Registry. The timing for calls is during 9am to 9pm and there can be no calls during other hours.

Telemarketers will be assigned mobile numbers starting with ‘70’ so that the end user can identify that the call is made from a telemarketer. Likewise, a unique SMS header allows for easy identification of commercial SMSes.

The stricter regulations also envisage a higher penalty of up to Rs 2.5 lakh and the telemarketers, who are found to be repeat offenders, face the prospects of their calls being blocked.

The new norms also allow consumers a wide choice of either completely blocking all commercial calls and messages or choosing to receive SMSes from certain segments such as financial products, real estate , education, health, consumer goods and automobiles , communications, tourism and leisure.

Customers can register by calling or messaging 1909, which is a toll free number, and registration will become effective within seven days against 45 days now. All customers who are already on the National DNC register need not register afresh and all commercial calls and messages to their number will be barred.

Scrubbing of numbers which used to be done by a centralized agency earlier, causing delays and other difficulties , has now been replaced by a system where telemarketers are required to scrub the data before sending the SMSes/making the calls through their service providers network. In addition, it has also been made mandatory for the service providers to filter the data. This two-stage screening is designed to stop unsolicited calls/SMSes.

Telemarketers have been restricted to 100 text messages a day and Trai has ensured that they are required to enter into an agreement with the service provider before they get telecom resources. As part of the agreement, the telemarketers are required to commit a deduction of Rs 25,000 for the first offence going up to Rs 2.5 lakh for the sixth offence from the security offered by them. Thereafter, the telemarketer will be blacklisted and will face disconnection services for two years.