TRAI rules for telecalling in India: the 140 and 1600 series, calling hours and what changed in 2025 and 2026

Most telecalling teams in India first hear about TRAI rules second-hand: a WhatsApp forward says ten-digit numbers are banned, a telecom operator bars an agent’s SIM, or a customer says they will “complain on 1909”. The TRAI rules for telecalling are public, and they are more specific than the forwards suggest. They decide which numbers commercial calls may come from, the hours in which commercial communication reaches people by default, how long you may keep calling someone who enquired, and what happens to a number after complaints.

This guide covers those rules as they stand after two amendments: the Second Amendment of February 2025 and the Third Amendment notified on 18 September 2026. For the DND register itself, consent and call recording, read our companion post DND, consent and call recording: what calling teams in India need to get right.

Where the rules come from

Commercial calls and messages in India are governed by TRAI’s Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, usually shortened to TCCCPR. TRAI amended them on 12 February 2025 (Second Amendment) and again on 18 September 2026 (Third Amendment, summarised in TRAI’s press release of the same day). The Third Amendment comes into force in stages: most of it thirty days after publication in the Gazette, some parts after sixty and ninety days.

The regulations bind telecom operators, who then act against senders, so enforcement reaches a sales team through its SIMs: barred outgoing calls, disconnection, or no new connections.

Calling hours: the default time bands

TRAI’s preference system works in time bands as well as categories. Schedule II of the 2018 regulations divides the day into bands that a person can block or allow by calling or texting 1909, and it sets four of them to off by default for every customer, including people who have never registered a preference: midnight to 06:00, 06:00 to 08:00, 08:00 to 10:00 and 21:00 to midnight. Unless the person switches those bands on, commercial communication scrubbed against the register reaches them only between 10:00 and 21:00.

People can also block particular bands, particular days and particular categories, or block promotional communication altogether. None of that is visible from a phone number: lists are checked (“scrubbed”) against the register through the operators’ systems, which is one reason promotional calling is routed through registered telemarketers. A practical reading for a sales team calling from its own phones is to keep commercial calls inside 10:00 to 21:00 unless the person has asked you to call at another time. How the DND categories work is covered in our DND and consent post.

Promotional, service and transactional calls

The regulations sort commercial communication into types, and the type decides which number may carry it and whether DND applies.

• Promotional: any call that carries promotional material or advertising for a product or service. If promotional content is mixed into another kind of call, the whole call counts as promotional.
• Service: a call to your own customer about something they bought (its warranty, delivery, a recall, a safety alert), or a call that helps complete a purchase the person is making, after their explicit consent.
• Transactional: the narrow set of alerts tied to a transaction the customer has just started, such as one-time passwords and payment confirmations.

Most of what a sales team does on the phone (offering a product, a visit, a demo, a discount) is promotional by this definition. A call that reminds a customer about their own installation date is closer to service. “Just checking in, and we also have an offer this week” is promotional, because of the mixing rule.

The 140 and 1600 number series

Since the 2025 amendment, operators must make sure commercial communication on their networks uses registered headers or numbers from the special series set aside for it. The Second Amendment states that promotional calls are to come from 140-series numbers, and that the Department of Telecommunications has allotted the 1600 series for service and transactional calls. TRAI’s September 2026 press release also lists the 1601 series alongside them.

Two related rules matter for answer rates. First, call management apps may not blanket-block these series or tag them as spam; the person can still block them on their own phone. Second, since the Third Amendment, operators’ spam-detection systems must not flag the 140, 1600 and 1601 series as suspected spam.

Complaints, and what happens to an unregistered sender

This is the part that reaches small teams calling from ordinary mobile numbers. The 2025 amendment says a sender who is not registered with any operator must not make commercial communication, and that if they do, all their telecom resources may be suspended or disconnected. Commercial communication from an unregistered sender is treated as unsolicited.

1. The person complains within seven days of the call, by calling or texting 1909, in the DND app or in their operator’s app.
2. The operator checks its call records to confirm the call happened, then looks for other complaints against the same sender.
3. Under the 2025 rules, complaints from five or more different people within ten days lead to suspension of the sender’s outgoing services on all their telecom resources while the operator investigates.
4. A first violation means outgoing calls are barred on all the sender’s connections for fifteen days. A second means disconnection of all their telecom resources for a year, blacklisting so no operator issues new ones, and blocking of the devices used. One number may be kept with outgoing calls barred.

The Third Amendment speeds this up. Operators must use AI-based systems to identify numbers likely to be sending unsolicited calls and share them with each other. Action can now start at three complaints from different people within ten days when the sender’s number has also been flagged by those systems, and five or more of a sender’s numbers flagged within ten days triggers investigation, including KYC re-verification and barring.

The 2026 Third Amendment: what changed for sales teams

Three changes affect day-to-day calling more than the rest.

Calls after an enquiry: seven days, in writing

The regulations recognise a relationship with someone who made an enquiry about your goods or services, but only for seven days from that enquiry, and only if the enquiry was made in writing or by digital means and you keep it in a verifiable form. A relationship based on an application for a product or service lasts three months. An existing customer relationship is a separate basis. TRAI’s explanation notes that senders had been stretching “inquiry” to cover oral ones.

Automated calls must be declared

An application-to-person (A2P) call is now defined as a call started by an application, software system or automated platform without direct human dialling, including autodialling, robocalls and prerecorded or artificial voices. Anyone making A2P calls must declare it to their operator in advance, with the numbers they will use. Undeclared A2P calls are treated as unsolicited.

Old consents must be verifiable and registered

Consents a business collected before or outside the operators’ consent system can now count, but only if they were obtained in a verifiable way and are then registered on the operators’ digital consent platform. A checkbox in an old spreadsheet does not qualify by itself.

What this means for a team calling from its own mobile numbers

How these rules apply to a salesperson calling someone who filled in a form yesterday is a question for your advisers; the regulations say more about senders and series than about individual sales calls. The direction is clear, though: requested calls, made promptly and kept on record, are on much firmer ground than cold promotion from personal SIMs. A practical routine:

1. Call enquiries fast. The seven-day window makes speed to lead a compliance matter as well as a sales one. Our post on follow-up timing has a cadence that fits inside a week.
2. Keep the written or digital enquiry. Store the source, the date and time, and where possible the form or message itself on the lead. A form submission, an IndiaMART enquiry or a WhatsApp message from the person is evidence; “he called the showroom” is not.
3. Move longer conversations onto a firmer basis. If the sale takes more than a week, an application, an order or a recorded consent changes the footing. Ask your advisers what consent wording and registration your business needs.
4. Send promotional campaigns through a registered telemarketer on 140-series numbers. Bought lists and cold promotion do not belong on your agents’ mobile numbers, which are exactly what complaints and barring act on.
5. Leave automated dialling off unless you have declared A2P calling to your operator.
6. Make opting out final. A person who asks not to be called should never hear from the team again, from any agent.
7. Keep attempts few and spaced out. Three complaints in ten days can now be enough for action.

Where LumaKol helps, and where it does not

LumaKol is built for calling people who asked to hear from you. Every call is an ordinary call from the agent’s own phone and work SIM, and these controls in Settings → Calling policy are checked by the apps before they dial:

• Calling hours and days. A workspace based in India starts with 10:00 to 20:00, Monday to Saturday, which matches the 10:00 start of the default bands; workspaces created before 26 October 2026 start at 9:00, so check Settings → Calling policy. Outside these hours the agent must confirm, and the call is flagged in reports.
• A do-not-call block: the outcome “Requested no contact” takes the lead out of every queue, and with the block on (the default) the apps refuse to dial that lead again.
• Attempt limits: 5 attempts by default, with waits of an hour, three hours and a day between unanswered calls.
• “Allow auto-dial next lead”, which owners and admins can switch off for the whole workspace so every call starts with a tap.

Leads from forms, IndiaMART, JustDial, Google Ads and the API keep their source and arrival time, and a hosted lead form can show your consent wording to the visitor. Custom fields can hold a consent date or reference. LumaKol does not check numbers against the DND register, does not register consent with operators and is not a telemarketer platform, so screening and registration stay with you. The India calling rules page sets out what LumaKol does and does not do, and the guide Set calling hours, DND and data protection walks through the settings.

For the wider picture, including call recording and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, read DND, consent and call recording. For auto-dial specifically, Auto-dial or tap to call compares the options.

Sources

• TRAI, Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018
• TRAI, Second Amendment Regulations, 2025, notified 12 February 2025, with its explanatory memorandum
• TRAI, Third Amendment Regulations, 2026, notified 18 September 2026
• TRAI, press release on the Third Amendment, 18 September 2026