The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stated that it has received a total of 1,037,596 complaints from January 2014 to September 2014 against telecom operators for activating value added services (VAS) without the consent of the consumer.

While the maximum number of complaints was registered in the month of August at 131,048, the minimum was reported in January at 84,583. Further, the total number of VAS activations and deactivations during the January-September 2014 stood at 568.8 million and 93.5 million respectively.

Though the telecom regulator did not share the name of the operators against whom the complaints have been received, it stated that it issued directions prohibiting the activation of VAS without the explicit consent of consumers. In addition, TRAI has also prescribed the manner in which the explicit consent is to be obtained. Further, it has launched a common toll-free number (155223) accessible through SMS or call across all operators to the customers for deactivating VAS.