Further, TruSense is in discussions with Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel as well for its services. “In India, we are only launching this on the Jio network. For subscribers of Vodafone Idea and Airtel, that ability will come soon,” the executive said.

NEW DELHI: TruSense, a digital identity and security solutions company of communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) provider Route Mobile, has partnered with India’s Reliance Jio to enable the verification of the telco’s mobile numbers via a “one-time-password (OTP)-less” process in a bid to help Jio’s 400 million-plus customers avoid falling prey to OTP-related frauds.

“Our announcement with Jio is around header enrichment technology. With this, the user puts their phone number, and seconds later, they are verified. There’s no waiting for an SMS to come in. We believe it is significantly more secure than traditional methods such as SMS,” David Vigar, Executive Vice President-Digital Identity Business, Route Mobile, told ETTelecom in an interview.

The header enrichment technology allows a brand to trigger a direct data connection between the mobile phone and the user’s mobile network. Through that connection, the telecom operator is able to see in real-time the phone number that’s attached to the SIM card and they are able to verify the phone number on the device being used, according to TruSense.

Using this technology, fintech, over-the-top (OTT) and e-commerce service providers, among others, can “silently verify” the phone number of a user during the registration and log-in stages.

Further, TruSense is in discussions with Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel as well for its services. “In India, we are only launching this on the Jio network. For subscribers of Vodafone Idea and Airtel, that ability will come soon,” the executive said.

“We are excited to be working very closely with Vodafone Idea. We will be making announcements in the not-too-distant future but not only for this technology; there is a number of services that they’re providing, more along the anti-fraud lines,” he said.

Vigar said that state-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is also conducting the trials of the header enrichment technology. “Certainly they want to get the technology working. They (BSNL) are a little bit behind Jio and Vodafone Idea, but they recognise that they are a key player in the market.”

This August, Route Mobile won an end-to-end A2P monetisation solutions deal from Vodafone Idea, after the CPaaS firm’s rival Tanla Platforms terminated a similar two-year partnership with the third-ranked telco. Hyderabad-based Tanla, as a result, expects to incur a revenue impact of nearly Rs 17 crore and a profit after tax (PAT) impact of about Rs 9 crore on a full-quarter basis post-November 2023.

He noted that India is one of the countries that has strengthened its efforts in addressing the menace of call and SMS spam with blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) which has had “some success” but “there’s more that needs to be done.”

On the recent surge in spam calls and SMSes in India, especially through OTT communication services applications like WhatsApp, the executive said, “These things are always very much a cat and mouse game. I think it’s really the industry coming together as a whole, communicating and figuring out together what’s the best way to solve this and how do we identify this quickly and shut it (spam) down.”

“It has been relatively easy for fraudsters to make a living through fraud, from things like SIM swap attacks. Now is the time, we as an industry, come together and start to launch the services that will help protect people from those frauds,” he said.

Lately, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been intensifying the crackdown on the menace of spam calls and SMSes through unregistered telemarketers (UTMs), and has asked all telcos to deploy detection systems that use artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML).

“The new data protection regime in India is much clearer now that the regulations have come out. I think that’s going to start accelerating a lot of these services to market. The challenge for TruSense is how we establish almost a global baseline around data privacy so that we can maintain a business that can scale globally,” Vigar said when asked about the impact of the new data protection law.

Publication: Telecom : Route Mobile’s TruSense partners Jio on OTP-less verification, says in talks with Vodafone Idea, Airtel