Microsoft and Tech Mahindra have joined hands on a new blockchain-based solution to fight against the unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) or spam calls in India.
Spam calls are a big problem for the telecom subscribers in the country, and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been continuously working with stakeholders to address the issues.
In 2010, TRAI had even formed a Do Not Disturb (DND) registry to reduce the spam calls and SMSes. The DND registry has more than 23 crore (230 million) subscribers. However, the unregistered telemarketers gain the consent through fraudulent tactics and continue to spam the users. In May this year, the telecom regulatory firm trusted blockchain to stop spammy calls and SMSes.
The new distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based solution will be compliant with TRAI regulations. Tech Mahindra and Microsoft said that they have been jointly working with TRAI on the issue for a long time now.
“Blockchain as a technology is a powerful tool to combat the issue of spam calls and fraud risks, to protect user information, as well as the integrity of the telecom sector. This Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based solution will enable enterprises to stop financial frauds and perpetration of misleading financial information by unregistered telecom marketers who rampantly use the SMS service of Telcos”, said Rajesh Dhuddu, Global Practice Leader, Blockchain, Tech Mahindra.
“Tech Mahindra is focused to solve real business problems of our customers and partner ecosystem by investing in next gen technologies like Blockchain under the TechMNxt charter.”
Built on Microsoft Azure, the new solution will bring together all the relevant parties like service providers and telemarketers onto a blockchain. The solution will be a shared and secured ledger of spam calls distributed across a network of computers. It will enable a transparent and verifiable system so that companies can mitigate the spam calls on their networks.
Telecom service providers and telemarketers will be able to deal with preference registration, header registration, template registration, consent acquisition, dynamic preference setting, stakeholder onboarding, scrubbing service, and complaint handling and tracking.
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“The intersection of cloud and blockchain will ensure a new way of monitoring and enforcing compliance throughout the ecosystem. Through this solution we will be able to help service providers be compliant with the new regulation. With a Microsoft Azure blockchain-powered solution, we will ensure that we mitigate loopholes used by fraudsters and spammers to reach end users,” said Prashant Shukla, National Tech Officer, Microsoft India.
“Microsoft believes blockchain has significant potential to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from markets of all types. Our ambition is to provide blockchain technology that drives real, long-term and sustainable business, economic and social value for the world.”
