TRAI’s New Mandates For Whitelisting URLs Stump Telcos

Telecom operators have reportedly communicated to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that they have been unable to implement new mandates regarding whitelisting of URLs in commercial messages. 

The imbroglio erupted after TRAI suggested additional requirements to the new whitelisting solution developed by telcos. As per Economic Times, these new directions included declaration of final destination URL while whitelisting a short URL.

In response, telecom operators wrote black to the authority, saying that it was not practical to implement the new requirement.

For the uninitiated, short URLs refer to temporary links used as part of message content in a bid to slash the number of characters. Also, whitelisting refers to the process by which commercial messages containing links only from approved sites are allowed to pass through. 

In the past too, telcos have raised similar issues, saying that dynamic web links and short URLs, which are generated in real-time, cannot be pre-registered on the SMS filtering platform. Hence, they believe that the final destination URLs can’t be declared while whitelisting a short URL.

This comes weeks after TRAI, on August 30, granted a one-month extension to telcos for whitelisting messages containing URLs or call-back numbers. Right afterwards on September 13, TRAI reportedly wrote to the telecom companies to inform them about additional compliance mandates regarding whitelisting of short URLs. 

“The telcos wrote back to TRAI saying they had already set up their systems as per the regulator’s initial directive and the new requirement is not practically and technically feasible to implement,” an official reportedly said. 

As per the report, the telcos also said that the additional requirements of declaring final destination URL while whitelisting a short URL was neither discussed with them nor was part of any of the directions issued by TRAI so far. 

Another executive reportedly added that TRAI informed the telcos of mandates while clarifying some other queries on September 13. “This came suddenly, and telcos had no clue how it could be implemented,” added the person.

The development comes at a time when the regulator has ramped up its crackdown on spam. Earlier this month, TRAI disconnected over 1 Cr mobile connections to curb pesky callers and fraudsters. On TRAI’s directions, telcos last month also blacklisted 50 entities for spamming users.