Last month, India's telecommunications regulator ordered operators to use blockchain technology in order to help curb spam calls in the country. In response, Tech Mahindra, an Indian multinational IT provider, announced today that it has teamed up with Microsoft to develop a blockchain-based ecosystem for combating unsolicited commercial calls in India.
The distributed ledger technology (DLT) -based solution will be built based on Microsoft Azure and it will comply with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) order. The regulator considers spam calls as "a major nuisance to telecom subscribers" in India, Tech Mahindra noted.
Microsoft and Tech Mahindra have started to design the technology following a series of discussions with TRAI and other stakeholders in this segment, a work that began since the regulator structured the rules for addressing spam calls.
Prashant Shukla, National Tech Officer for Microsoft India, said:
The intersection of cloud and blockchain will ensure a new way of monitoring and enforcing compliance throughout the ecosystem. Through this solution, we will be able to help service providers be compliant with the new regulation. With a Microsoft Azure blockchain-powered solution, we will ensure that we mitigate loopholes used by fraudsters and spammers to reach end users. Microsoft believes blockchain has significant potential to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse from markets of all types.
Tech Mahindra added that the blockchain-based technology will bring all relevant entities such as telecom service providers and telemarketers onto a single ecosystem in order to help them handle multiple tasks including preference registration, consent acquisition, dynamic preference setting, and stakeholder onboarding.
The new partnership expands Microsoft's growing stake in the blockchain technology. Earlier this year, the software giant partnered with the ID2020 alliance to develop a secure digital identity system. In 2016, Microsoft kicked off a similar collaboration with Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys.
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