India, March 23 -- India's telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has for the first time proposed introducing charges on automated bulk voice calls. The move is aimed at discouraging the misuse of low-cost person-to-person calling routes by spammers. In its recent draft amendment, released last week  TRAI has suggested a termination charge of up to five paisa per minute for Application-to-Person (A2P) calls, automated calls initiated by software systems, including robocalls and autodiallers.

The regulator has invited stakeholder comments on the draft until 12 April, with counter-comments due by 27 April.

Under the proposal, the termination charge would be payable by the originating telecom operator to ...