Relief for telcos: Caller ID display proposal dropped in telecom Bill

Clause dropped in final version of Bill passed on Thursday

- JATIN GROVER

IN A RELIEF for telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea the government does not seem to be going ahead with its earlier proposal of compulsorily displaying calling party names Calling Name Presentation in mobile calls. The clause which mandated this in the draft Telecom Bill has been dropped in the final version, which was passed by the Parliament on Thursday.

Sources said that the same has been dropped as methods to seek consent from users, and display their names on the phone screen of the receiving party, would have led to serious privacy issues and rise in data breaches. The development is positive for telcos as they had flagged challenges in implementation of the solution, which would have also increased the infrastructure cost for them. Further, implementation of the CNAP feature would also have required changes in call flow for them, resulting in longer call setup time, thereby impacting quality of services.

While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has been working on the recommendations on the CNAP feature, the department of telecommunications (DOT) does not seem to be keen at the moment to implement it owing to privacy implications, sources in the know said.