Government has said that more than one crore mobile connections have been disconnected and around 2.27 lakh mobile handsets have been blocked for involvement in cybercrime and financial fraud.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said that these connections were identified with help of its Sanchar Saathi initiative. In the last fortnight, over 3.5 lakh spam numbers have been disconnected, and 50 entities have been blacklisted. Additionally, around 3.5 Lakh unverified SMS headers and 12 Lakh content templates are blocked.
The department, in collaboration with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has initiated several measures to enable spam-free quality telecom service with high-speed data. TRAI has directed telecom operators to disconnect and blacklist entities using bulk connections for spam calls, including robocalls and pre-recorded calls.
Benchmarks for key parameters like network availability, call drop rates, and packet drop rates will be gradually tightened, as TRAI has also released its revised regulations on the Standards of Quality of Service of Access. These regulations will come into effect on October 1st this year.