Telecommunication Authority of India (TRAI) has instructed all the mobile operators to implement a solution that would intimate marketing contact centers if their potential customer is on international roaming and refrain from calling.

Interesting move, isn’t it?

While on international roaming all of us encounter the issue of not being able to see the Caller’s ID and end up picking up most of the calls. In a couple of trips, I had instructed important people to call me thrice in a row with one-ring to let me know its you calling. Despite have picked up a couple of useless calls wasting close to INR 200. Of course, the rant and rave had followed.

Customer Governance is a buzz word these days, the aggressive marketers have hit the ceiling and want to ensure they don’t end up irritating their prospects and customers. And, the current recommendation from TRAI is further going to strengthen the end-consumer’s privacy by deploying checks and balances at multiple levels.

In addition to this, I would expect telecom folks on creating a look-up table with contact-center with a list of contact-center numbers and provide an option to their subscribers to block calls originating from those numbers. From a couple of casual conversations I had with folks from telecommunication industry, learnt the complications involved in deploying such an approach and have been wondering how it can be addressed.

By TRAI’s instruction, I could see some light at end of the customer-governance tunnel. If I understand the proposed model correctly, telecommunication operators will deploy a solution that would let the caller know about the user’s international roaming status with a special beep tone (equivalent to “I’m on a foreign soil, please hang up and don’t waste my monies).

I hope, they will extend this to national roaming as well.