India forces caller-ID apps to feed spam reports to telcos

India has extended its anti-spam regime to require caller-ID and call-management apps to share users’ spam reports with telecom operators, prompting spam-blocking app maker Truecaller to call the ruling anti-competitive.

On Friday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the country’s telecom regulator, amended rules governing commercial communications, making it mandatory for call-ID and call-management apps that let users flag calls as spam or junk to send those reports to a blockchain-based platform maintained by telecom operators. The platform tracks commercial communications and enforces anti-spam rules.

The change, TRAI said, is intended to broaden the pool of spam reports available for action against spammers, effectively connecting reports collected by apps with the telecom industry’s enforcement infrastructure.

However, Truecaller told TechCrunch that it sees 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 is Truecaller’s largest market, accounting for well over 350 million of its more than 500 million monthly active users globally. The Stockholm-based company uses community reports alongside automated detection and other signals to identify and block spam calls.