India mandates caller-ID apps to share spam data with telecom operators

India has expanded its anti-spam regulations to mandate that caller-ID and call-management applications share user spam reports with telecom operators, a move that has led Truecaller, a prominent spam-blocking app provider, to label the policy as anti-competitive.

On Friday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the nation’s telecom regulator, updated rules governing commercial communications. These updates make it compulsory for call-ID and call-management apps that allow users to flag calls as spam or junk to transmit those reports to a blockchain-based platform operated by telecom providers. This platform monitors commercial communications and enforces anti-spam protocols.

According to TRAI, this modification aims to expand the volume of spam reports available for action against spammers, effectively linking reports gathered by apps with the telecom industry’s enforcement infrastructure.

However, Truecaller informed TechCrunch that it views this requirement as a “one-way exchange” that is “anti-competitive,” arguing that it transfers commercially valuable data from call-management apps like itself to telecom operators.

India represents Truecaller’s largest market, accounting for more than 350 million of its over 500 million monthly active users worldwide. The Stockholm-based company utilizes community reports alongside automated detection and other signals to identify and block spam calls.

These rules emerge as India battles spam and fraudulent calls on a massive scale. In its February report, Truecaller stated that users in the country encountered approximately 42 billion spam calls in 2025, including those that were blocked, labeled, or ignored. The company also reported blocking nearly 12 billion spam calls during the year.

This is not the first instance of conflict between Truecaller and the Indian regulator regarding spam call handling. The Swedish company previously objected to restrictions that prevented call-management apps from automatically labeling calls from certain government-designated number ranges as spam. It argued that such exemptions could allow unwanted calls to bypass its filters.

Nevertheless, Friday’s amendments maintain this restriction, barring call-management apps from blanket blocking, filtering, or spam-tagging calls from designated number series used for promotional, service, and transactional communications. Individual users may still choose to block such calls on their own devices, the regulator clarified.

“While our data and user sentiment clearly indicate that spam has surged due to this free pass for spammers, we have been compliant with this since late last year,” a Truecaller spokesperson stated.

Sumeysh Srivastava, a partner at New Delhi-based consulting firm The Quantum Hub, who leads its telecom-regulation policy work, noted that the latest change bridges two distinct layers: telecom operators provide the underlying network and operate the blockchain-based anti-spam system, while caller-ID apps function on top of the network to identify and filter calls.

This raises technical and jurisdictional questions, Srivastava told TechCrunch, including what reporting standards apps must adhere to and how the requirement will be enforced against companies that are not themselves telecom operators.

A March draft (PDF) proposed using India’s IT laws to enforce the requirement. However, Srivastava pointed out that the new announcement did not specify whether this enforcement mechanism was retained in the final rules.

It remains unclear how much information the apps will actually need to provide under the updated regulation. Kazim Rizvi, founding director of New Delhi-based policy think tank The Dialogue, told TechCrunch that requiring an app to transmit a specific spam report made by a user is materially different from requiring it to share broader datasets, reputation signals, or analytical systems used to identify suspicious calls.

The rules require clarity on what information must be transmitted, how users are notified or asked for consent, and how that data can subsequently be retained and used, Rizvi said.

TRAI did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions regarding what information apps would be required to share and whether the rule would also apply to spam-reporting features built into smartphone operating systems and dialers such as Android and iOS.

New rules for AI-powered calls

The amendments also address the increasing use of software and AI voice agents to make calls. Calls made automatically, without a person directly dialing the number, now fall under TRAI’s application-to-person (A2P) framework. This includes robocalls and calls using prerecorded or artificial voices.

Companies using such systems must declare their use and the phone numbers involved to their telecom operators in advance. Undeclared A2P calls will be treated as spam, TRAI stated.

The key test, Srivastava said, is how a call is initiated, rather than simply whether it uses an AI-generated voice, leaving some uncertainty around AI-assisted calls that involve human initiation.

Satya N. Gupta, a former additional secretary at TRAI, told TechCrunch that the new rules do not restrict businesses from using AI or other automated calling technologies, but instead require them to disclose their use to telecom operators.

Telecom operators will also be permitted to levy a termination charge of up to 5 paise (approximately 0.052 cents) per minute on A2P calls. However, calls made using certain designated number ranges will be exempt.

Rizvi told TechCrunch that the new definition could also cover calls made using software even when a person is still involved, such as calls from contact centers and click-to-call services. “Without that distinction, the A2P category risks becoming broader than the regulatory harm it is intended to address,” he said.