India mandates spam-report sharing from caller-ID apps, regulates AI voice calls

India's Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) on Friday amended rules governing commercial communications, requiring caller-ID and call-management apps to send user-flagged spam reports to a blockchain-based platform maintained by telecom operators. TRAI said the change is intended to broaden the pool of spam reports available for action against spammers.

Truecaller, whose largest market is India with over 350 million of its more than 500 million monthly active users globally, called the requirement a "one-way exchange" that is "anti-competitive." The Stockholm-based company uses community reports, automated detection and other signals to identify and block spam calls. In a February 2026 report, it said Indian users encountered around 42 billion spam calls in 2025, of which nearly 12 billion were blocked.

The amendments also bring automatically dialed calls — including robocalls and those using prerecorded or artificial voices — under TRAI's application-to-person (A2P) framework. Companies using such systems must declare their use and the phone numbers involved to their telecom operators in advance; undeclared A2P calls will be treated as spam. Operators may levy a termination charge of up to 5 paise (about 0.052 cents) per minute on A2P calls, with certain designated number ranges exempt.