Unstoppable Rings

“If you can’t laugh at your

own problems, call me

and I will laugh at them.”

— Anonymous

Old habits die hard. In India’s telecom ecosystem, they appear immortal. For more than 15 years, subscribers have endured an unrelenting barrage of unsolicited calls and promotional messages, the modern equivalent of door-to-door hawking, but far more intrusive, because tis salesman follows you everywhere. The persistence of this nuisance – despite crackdowns, headline-grabbing fines and stern regulatory warnings – raises an itchy question. If the rules do exist, why do these calls not stop? The paradox is glaring. India has one of the most elaborate regulatory frameworks to curb unsolicited commercial communication. Yet, millions of customers, including those who signed up for Do Not Call (DNC) or Do Not Disturb (DND) registries, continue to report daily harassment. This is not an occasional slip. It is systemic failure masquerading as enforcement.

The arc of this saga stretches back to 2010, when industry watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) spat out tough regulations to rein in telemarketers and get telcos to take responsibility. The penalties were scary for the time; escalating fines that could result in hefty monetary punishment and outright termination of licenses. Telemarketers were required to register, operators to police their networks. India’s telecom consumers had been promised relief. But relief never arrived.

Dud Machine Guns

Instead, what followed was a cycle familiar in Indian regulatory history; a machine-gun burst of action, temporary compliance, gradual drift and eventual regression. Nuisance calls lived – selling loans, miracle investments, even outright scams. Enforcement bodies cawed and cooed, but the experience of subscribers remained stubbornly unchanged. Consider India’s psyche of spam. For telemarketers, the cost of making millions of automated calls is negligible compared to the occasional windfall conversion. For operators, promotional traffic is revenue. For enforcement agencies, the scale of violations is overwhelming. In this dark triangle of incentives, the consumer’s peace is an easy casualty.

When proposed, the fines were draconian and led to deterrence. Clampdown frameworks envisioned escalating penalties running into lakhs of rupees, with a ‘make-good’ concept where abused users would receive compensation. The promise didn’t materialise. Over time, penalties were revised, diluted or patchily applied. Or not at all. The fear factor evaporated. Compliance became negotiable.

The numbers released over the years paint a curious picture. Authorities periodically report warnings issued, connections blocked and crores in recommended penalties. Recommended, not collected. The flood continues. Smartphones now flag incoming calls as ‘Potential Fraud’ or ‘Suspected Spam’, turning what should be a communication device into a guardian in digital times. For users, most unknown calls fall into this grey zone. When consumer devices become the first line of defence rather than regulatory enforcement, something is structurally broken.

Action Negates Intent

Part of the problem perhaps lies in fragmentation of responsibility. Telemarketers blame aggregators. Aggregators blame operators. Operators cite regulatory complexity. Enforcement agencies emphasise due process. Subscribers, caught dead-centre, remain stuck navigating complaint portals, registration systems and reporting mechanisms that feel designed more for statistical compliance than swift relief.

The authorities have often expressed their ‘strong intent’ to tighten the screws. The Department of Telecommunications has pushed identification frameworks, strict verification norms and series-based numbering to help users recognise commercial calls. There have also been high-profile crackdowns on fraudulent mobile connections linked to cybercrime. Official reports highlight lakhs of disconnections and frozen accounts tied to suspect activity, underscoring the scale of misuse.

Yet, nuisance marketing persists because it exists in the grey zone between legality and enforcement capacity. Not every promotional call is illegal. Not every telemarketer is rogue. But the enforcement architecture struggles to separate legitimate communication from predatory spam in real time. By the time action is taken, the damage has been done. The damagers have flown to Timbuctoo.

The irony is sharp. India’s telecom sector is globally celebrated for its scale, innovation and digital infrastructure. Yet, it cannot reliably shield subscribers from harassment that is technologically easy to prevent. Authentication frameworks, AI-based filtering, blockchain registries and stricter consent protocols are often discussed, piloted or announced. Implementation, however, remains uneven. Policy ambition races ahead of ground execution.

There is also a cultural dimension. Consumers have normalised intrusion. Many no longer bother to report violations because they assume nothing will change. This erosion of trust weakens the feedback regulators depend on. A system that relies heavily on complaints collapses when citizens disengage.

Savvy Criminals Step In

Cybercrime adds another layer of urgency. Spam calls are no longer just irritating; they are gateways to phishing, financial fraud and identity theft. When nuisance marketing morphs into organised deception, regulatory laxity becomes a public safety concern. The authorities have repeatedly heard warnings about the scale of telecom-enabled fraud. What makes the pesky calls saga particularly troubling is its déjà vu quality. Headlines announcing crackdowns have resurfaced repeatedly over the years, each time promising change. Each time, the consumer waits. Each time, the calls return. It is a regulatory Groundhog Day, punctuated by press releases but rarely by any real change in the market.

The deeper question is not whether rules exist, but whether enforcement carries credible certainty. Deterrence only works when violators believe punishment is inevitable, not theoretical. Today, the spam ecosystem appears to operate on the opposite assumption, that crackdown is sporadic, fines negotiable and compliance optional. How long can this chutzpah continue? How many regulatory announcements must cycle through headlines before phone users get relief? And why, after 15 years of frameworks, fines and reforms, does India still brace for a daily tsunami of unwanted calls?

The answer lies less in drafting rules. It does more in executing existing norms with ruthlessness. Automated network-level filtering, mandatory consent verification, real-time penalty triggers and transparent public reporting could transform deterrence from rhetoric into reality. Most important, accountability must extend beyond telemarketers to operators too.

Consumers have waited long enough. The technology exists. The rules exist. The grievance is universal. What remains missing is the enforcement will to align industry incentives with subscriber rights. Until that happens, India’s telecom revolution will continue to carry an absurd contradiction: a nation capable of handling billions of digital transactions daily, yet unable to stop a few million unwanted calls from invading its citizens’ peace. Again, and again, day after day. The phones just keep ringing.

Soliloquy: It is all in the penalty math. India’s anti-spam regime has never lacked intimidating numbers, at least on paper. When TRAI first framed its crackdown architecture, the penalty ladder was designed to scare telemarketers into toeing the line. First violations attracted a Rs 25,000 fine. Second offences escalated to Rs 75,000. Subsequent infringements climbed sharply – Rs 80,000, Rs 1.25 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh – culminating in penalties of Rs 2 lakh, plus blacklisting. Telcos enabling such traffic weren’t spared, with exposure running into lakhs per breach under quality-of-service enforcement provisions.

Consider the scale. Over the years, regulatory disclosures have spoken of tens of lakhs of warning notices and recommended penalties exceeding Rs 100 crore in aggregate across enforcement cycles. Compare that with the commercial upside. A mass telemarketing blast costs a few paise per call, while a conversion rate of even 0.1 per cent on financial products, insurance or credit offers can generate commissions running into crores. For large aggregators pushing millions of calls a day, revenues can dwarf sporadic penalties, turning fines into just another cost of doing business, not a deterrent.

The writer can be reached on [email protected]. Views expressed are personal. The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist