Truecaller has publicly challenged the anti-spam framework of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). The company says that due to these rules, it is becoming difficult for the caller ID platform to protect users from unwanted calls. This debate is about TRAI’s rules in which caller ID apps have been instructed not to show calls coming from commercially used phone number series 1400 and 1600 as ‘spam’.
The issue came to light when Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala commented on the regulator on Rishit Jhunjhunwala said that this policy has reduced the trust of customers on business calls and misuse of number series has increased. According to an Economic Times report, TRAI is also considering taking action against caller ID apps that mark these calls as spam.
Wondering why spam calls have increased SIGNIFICANTLY in India recently? Well, it’s actually going to get worse, here’s why:
In late 2025, TRAI enforced businesses to call consumers using 140 (for telemarketing calls) and 1600 (for BFSI companies to make service/transaction pic.twitter.com/Gy5ykiBxrL
— Rishit Jhunjhunwala (@rishj) July 8, 2026
1400-1600 series started in 2024
TRAI introduced 1400 and 1600 number series in 2024, so that users can easily identify commercial calls. The 1400 series is for telemarketing and the 1600 series is for service and transactional calls. The regulator said the move was aimed at preventing spam and fraud on telecom networks across India.
However, Jhunjhunwala claims that this system has backfired, saying that according to True Caller’s internal data, in the last eight months, users have rejected 81 percent of calls coming from 1400 series and 79 percent of calls coming from 1600 series. He also told that during this period, users stopped 74 million calls coming from these numbers. The platform doesn’t have the ability to mark these numbers as spam, so Truecaller has added a Frequently Blocked badge. This lets users know when a number is blocked more than once by the community.
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