Richard Humphreys |
Microsoft and Tech Mahindra, a provider of digital transformation, consulting and business re-engineering services and solutions, are collaborating on a blockchain based solution that aims to fight unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) in India.
Created in line with the regulations issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the solution leverages the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
“Blockchain as a technology is a powerful tool to combat the issue of spam calls and fraud risks, to protect user information, as well as the integrity of the telecom sector. This distributed ledger technology (DLT) based solution will enable enterprises to stop financial frauds and perpetration of misleading financial information by unregistered telecom marketers who rampantly use the SMS service of Telcos”, said Rajesh Dhuddu, global practice leader for Blockchain at Tech Mahindra. “Tech Mahindra is focused to solve real business problems of our customers and partner ecosystem by investing in next gen technologies like Blockchain under the TechMNxt charter,” he added.
The DLT-based solution brings all the relevant parties in the ecosystem onto blockchain, helping telecom service providers and telemarketers take care of preference registration, consent acquisition, dynamic preference setting, stakeholder onboarding, header registration, template registration, scrubbing service and complaint handling and tracking – which are in line with the tenets of the TRAI regulation. The solution will be a shared, secured ledger of UCCs distributed across a network of computers, which will ensure a transparent and verifiable system to help companies mitigate UCC on their networks. It conforms to the recently passed TRAI regulation and will enable all ecosystem players to comply to it.
“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. Our ambition is to provide blockchain technology that drives real, long-term and sustainable business, economic and social value for the world,” said Prashant Shukla, national tech officer at Microsoft India.