Menace of Spam Calls (Telemarketing)

If we are paying for our phone calls, why should we allow telemarketing calls? It would have made sense if we were getting the service for free.

Smart phone users have many tools to deal with spam calls like blocking a number, installing Truecaller to identify a caller before receiving a call, etc., but the problem becomes acute if one is still using old-style feature phone.

Every afternoon my 65-year-old mom has to keep her phone silent because her own mobile service provider dutifully and punctually calls to offer latest ringtones, caller tunes, free data and talk-time, interrupting her much-needed naps.  Maybe calls from the network provider are out of the purview of DND.

It does not require rocket science to block telemarketing numbers.

DND is not 100% efficient.  

It should not be too difficult to have a system where you can mark a number as spam after ending a spam call.  There can be a particular key combination or every mobile should provide a menu option to report a number as spam in by sending an SMS to TRAI.  If e-mail providers can do it, so can mobile operators.

HOW TO AVOID ABUSE OF THIS FACILITY?

Suppose someone wants to harass you by reporting your number falsely as spam.  This can easily be avoided by following a policy that a number would only be blocked by TRAI if it is reported by at least 10 different subscribers and no two reported numbers can be reported by the same set of 10 subscribers.