More power to telecom consumers as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Thursday directed the telecom companies to start the trials for Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) services.

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Zee Business learned from sources that in a letter sent to all telecom operators, the telecom department directed the telecom companies to start the trial for CNAP, which will help the telecom consumers know who the caller actually is, making it easier for users to decide whether to answer the call or not. CNAP will also help in preventing spam calls and fraud on telecom networks.

It was further mentioned that customers with bulk connections, like banks, will be allowed to have a common name for all connections, which can also be registered under the company name or trademark. For this, it will be mandatory for the user to provide all the necessary documents.

Earlier, on February 23, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) sent recommendations to the government for the introduction of CNAP services for users.

In its recommendations, TRAI noted that while native third-party apps like Truecaller and Bharat Caller ID may offer features for caller identification and spam identification, their foundation is crowd-sourced data, which may not be reliable.

For that, TRAI stated that telecom operators will need to create and maintain a database containing customer names along with their phone numbers.

What is CNAP?

Caller Name Presentation, or CNAP in short, is a service similar to Truecaller that will show the caller’s name on a user's device when they get a call.