India’s IT giant, Tech Mahindra and Microsoft have partnered to create blockchain-based technology to curb annoying calls and SMS as recommended by India’s telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, (TRAI).
According to a joint statement by two companies on Monday (27), “Tech Mahindra, …announced its collaboration with Microsoft to create a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based solution to build a robust ecosystem in line with the regulations issued by TRAI. Based on blockchain technology and built on Microsoft Azure, the solution aims at mitigating the issue of unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) in the country, according to a statement from Tech Mahindra.”
TRAI has stated that UCC or spam calls are a major nuisance to telecom subscribers across the country and has been working with stakeholders to curb this menace. TRAI had established a ‘Do Not Disturb’ (DND) registry in 2010, however, while the registry has more than 23 crore subscribers, unregistered telemarketers continue to spam customers, obtaining their consent through fraudulent tactics.
Tech Mahindra and Microsoft have been jointly working with TRAI on this issue since the time this regulation was being formally structured and have designed this solution post a series of collective sessions with the regulator and multiple stakeholders in the value chain.
“Blockchain as a technology is a powerful tool to combat the issue of spam calls and fraud risks, to protect user information, as well as the integrity of the telecom sector. This DLT-based solution will enable enterprises to stop financial frauds and perpetration of misleading financial information by unregistered telecom marketers who rampantly use the SMS service of Telcos”, said Rajesh Dhuddu, Global Practice Leader, Blockchain, Tech Mahindra.
“Tech Mahindra is focused to solve real business problems of our customers and partner ecosystem by investing in next-gen technologies like Blockchain under the TechMNxt charter,” he pointed out.
According to a release from Tech Mahindra, the DLT-based solution brings all the relevant parties in the ecosystem onto blockchain, helping telecom service providers and telemarketers take care of preference registration, consent acquisition, dynamic preference setting, stakeholder onboarding, header registration, template registration, scrubbing service, and complaint handling and tracking – which are in line with the tenets of the TRAI regulation.
The solution will be a shared, secured ledger of UCCs distributed across a network of computers, which will ensure a transparent and verifiable system to help companies mitigate UCC on their networks. It conforms to the recently passed TRAI regulation and will enable all ecosystem players to comply to it, Tech Mahindra said.
“The intersection of cloud and blockchain will ensure a new way of monitoring and enforcing compliance throughout the ecosystem. Through this solution, we will be able to help service providers be compliant with the new regulation. With a Microsoft Azure blockchain-powered solution, we will ensure that we mitigate loopholes used by fraudsters and spammers to reach end users. Microsoft believes blockchain has significant potential to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse from markets of all types. Our ambition is to provide blockchain technology that drives real, long-term and sustainable business, economic and social value for the world,” said Prashant Shukla, National Tech Officer, Microsoft India in a statement.
TechMNxt is a global program rolled out by Tech Mahindra, designed by pre-empting and anticipating customer’s evolving and dynamic needs. It is all about ‘enhanced intelligence and collaborative disruption’ and focuses on leveraging next-gen technologies like Blockchain.
Lakshmi Mittal 
