Truecaller has publicly challenged India’s telecom regulator over new anti-spam rules, warning that the measures are making it harder to protect consumers from fraudulent and unwanted calls in the company’s largest market.
The new regulations, introduced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), prohibit caller identification applications from labelling numbers beginning with the 140 and 160 prefixes as spam. Those number ranges have been designated for commercial communications and financial institutions, with regulators aiming to ensure legitimate businesses can reach customers without being mistakenly blocked.
Truecaller argues that the policy has created an unintended loophole that fraudsters and aggressive telemarketers are exploiting. Because the protected numbers cannot be marked as spam, the company says scammers have increasingly adopted the same prefixes, undermining consumer trust in calls originating from those ranges.
According to the Swedish caller identification platform, users are now ignoring 81% of calls from 140-series numbers and 79% of calls from 160-series numbers. The company says the figures show consumers have become wary of answering calls carrying the official prefixes, reducing the effectiveness of the regulator’s efforts to distinguish legitimate businesses from fraudulent callers.
TRAI has defended the framework, saying the rules are intended to protect verified commercial communications and improve confidence in legitimate calls from banks, financial institutions and registered businesses. The regulator is also seeking powers under India’s Information Technology Act to take action against call management applications that incorrectly classify or block officially designated numbers.
The standoff comes at a challenging time for Truecaller, which derives roughly three-quarters of its revenue from India. While the company recently surpassed 500 million monthly active users globally, with more than 350 million in India, it has faced slowing growth, weaker advertising revenue and increasing competition from telecom operators introducing native caller identification services.
India’s telecom companies are expanding their own caller identification capabilities through the rollout of Calling Name Presentation, or CNAP, which displays a caller’s verified identity directly through the mobile network. Analysts say widespread adoption of the service could reduce consumers’ reliance on third-party caller identification apps over time.
The disagreement highlights the growing tension between regulators seeking to standardise digital communications and technology companies that rely on crowd-sourced data to combat spam and fraud. As India intensifies efforts to curb unwanted calls, the outcome of the dispute could reshape how hundreds of millions of users identify suspicious callers and influence the future role of third-party caller identification platforms in one of the world’s largest telecommunications markets.
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Emmanuel Abara Benson is a business journalist and editor covering artificial intelligence, global markets, and emerging technology.
He has previously worked with Business Insider Africa and Nairametrics, reporting on finance, startups, and innovation.
His work focuses on AI, digital economy, and global tech trends.
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