On October 28, 2024, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) announced the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) efforts to curb spam calls and messages. Key actions taken by TRAI include: 

• TRAI issued directions on August 13, 2024, mandating that any entity found to be making promotional voice calls in violation of the directions would face strict consequences such as the disconnection of all telecom resources, blacklisting for up to two years, and a ban on new resource allocation during the blacklisting period. In response to these directions, over 800 entities/individuals have been blacklisted and more than 1.8 million mobile numbers/telecom resources were disconnected;
• access providers have implemented mandatory whitelisting of URLs, APKs, or OTT links in messages effective from October 1, 2024. This way, only safe and approved links can be obtained through SMS, protecting consumers from harmful or fake websites, apps, or other online threats;
• with effect from October 1, 2024, telemarketing calls starting with the 140xx numbering series have been migrated to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) (blockchain) platform for strict monitoring and control; and
• access providers have implemented technical solutions to ensure the traceability of entities (senders/principal entities) involved in sending a message to recipients. This will ensure that each person who handles the message, from the sender to the final delivery, is tracked. This involves defining the principal entity-telemarketer's chain, through which messages travel before reaching the access provider.

To provide a transition time for awareness, technical upgrades, and chain declaration, TRAI has directed access providers to ensure the principal entity-telemarketer chain declaration by all principal entities and telemarketers at the earliest, and the principal entities and telemarketers who default on principal entities and telemarketers chain binding to be issued a warning by respective access providers on a daily basis until November 30, 2024. With effect from December 1, 2024, any traffic messages where the chain of telemarketers is not defined or does not match with the pre-defined chain shall be rejected.

You can read the press release here.