In November last year, TRAI floated a consultation paper seeking comments about the potential introduction of Caller Name Presentation (CNAP).
The feature will allow users to know the identity of the person calling them. The basic idea is that if people are aware of the person who is calling them, they can make an informed choice about those calls. At the same time, such a feature could potentially help in curbing harassment and other spam calls.
The proposal CNAP will also be difficult to execute from a technical perspective given that a number of phones in the Indian market may not be able to support it, telcos have said.
Meanwhile, Truecaller, which already offers a similar service albeit through a crowdsourcing model has said since several people purchase SIM cards using forged identity cards, TRAI’s proposal to use SIM registration data to display callers’ names might be fraught with inaccuracies since “the identity of the actual user of a mobile number may not be the same as the subscriber”.
