Truecaller clashes with India’s telecom regulator over anti-spam rules

Caller identification service Truecaller is in a public dispute with India's telecom regulator over the country's rules for combating spam. Truecaller asserts that the new regulations, intended to protect consumers, are making it more difficult for the company to identify and block unwanted calls in its largest market.

Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala publicly criticized the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday. He accused the watchdog of preventing Truecaller from marking calls from India's designated business number series (1400 and 1600) as spam. Jhunjhunwala stated this restriction has led to the misuse of these numbers and eroded trust in legitimate business communications.

The conflict stems from a framework introduced in 2024, where TRAI designated the 1400 and 1600 number series for commercial communications. The objective was to help consumers identify legitimate business communications and curb spam and scam calls. India, a major global telecommunications market, has implemented various measures to address fraudulent communication.

However, Jhunjhunwala claims the policy has resulted in unintended consequences. According to internal company data, Truecaller users have lost confidence in these numbers. Over the past eight months, users have ignored 81% of calls from the 1400 series and 79% from the 1600 series. During this period, users also manually blocked 74 million calls from these two series, with daily blocking actions against 1600-series numbers tripling since October 2025.

As Truecaller can no longer mark these specific numbers as spam, it has implemented a "Frequently Blocked" badge. This badge alerts users when a number from the designated series has been blocked by numerous other users, serving as a warning for potentially problematic calls.