The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched a new numbering series, 160xxxxxxxx, for making service/transactional calls. This project is a step towards allowing individuals to readily recognise authorised calls, the Ministry of Defence said in a release on Thursday, May 30. For all transaction and service calls, 160 series has also been launched.

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Currently, 140xxxxxxx series has been allocated to telemarketers for making promotional, service, and transactional voice calls.

According to the release, the DoT has allocated a new numbering series, i.e., 160xxxxxxx which will exclusively be used for service and transactional voice calls by the 'principle entities.' This clear differentiation between service and transactional calls versus other types of calls will make it easier for citizens to manage their communication. Now, for example, the service and transactional calls originating from financial entities like the RBI, SEBI, PFRDA, IRDA, etc shall start from 1601.

As 140xxxxxxx series is extensively used for promotional calls, consumers normally do not respond to such calls, and many important service/transactional calls are missed, the Defence Ministry release stated. This has resulted in the wide use of regular 10-digit numbers by genuine entities for making service and transactional calls. This also gave fraudsters an opportunity to deceive consumers using 10-digit numbers, it added.

The release said that the introduction of the new series is to create confidence among consumers and to enable them to distinguish between spam calls originating from 10-digit unknown numbers and genuine service and transactional calls from genuine 'Principle Entities', there was a need for separate number series to cater to service and transactional voice calls.

Telecom Service Providers (TSP) shall ensure adequate verification of every entity before assigning a number from the 160 series and the entity shall undertake to use it only for service/transactional calls as per the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCCPR), 2018, it said.

Further, the release said that consumers can have more confidence in the legitimacy of calls from the 160xxxxxxx series, reducing the risk of falling victim to scams. For any suspected fraud communications, Citizen are advised to report it to Chakshu facility at Sanchar Saathi (www.sancharsaathi.gov.in).

The DoT encourages consumers to activate the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) Do Not Disturb (DND) feature to block unwanted promotional calls, further enhancing their protection against spam, the release added.

A service call is a voice call made to the recipient either with his consent or using a template registered for the purpose, the primary purpose of which is to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously consented to enter into with the sender or to provide warranty information, product recall information, safety or security information with respect to a commercial product or service used or purchased by the recipient.

A transactional call is a voice call that is not promotional in nature and is for the purpose of alerting its own customers or account holders and information to be communicated by the voice call is time-critical in nature. A promotional call is a commercial communication voice call for which the sender has not obtained explicit consent from the recipient to make such voice calls.

With agency inputs