New Delhi: With the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) directing operators to introduce the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service across all service areas, cellphone users on 4G and 5G networks will see the name of the person calling them along with the number from 1 November.
In a circular dated 13 October, the DoT’s Licensing Policy Wing said operators “shall provide the calling name presentation service to each user without the requirement of any separate request from such user”. The directive follows trials that began in November 2025, when Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and Bharatiya Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) tested the service in Haryana and Airtel in Himachal Pradesh. The DoT had then set March 2026 as the deadline for a nationwide rollout. That deadline passed without full coverage: the private operators had the service live, but BSNL said in late March that its rollout was three to four months away, pending integration with private networks.
The order does not cover 2G and 3G networks or landlines, whose inclusion “shall be considered separately, after examination of the matter”, the circular said. The DoT had said last year that the absence of compatible software patches made the service technically infeasible on circuit-switched 2G networks, which serve a section of feature-phone users in rural and semi-urban areas. Airtel and Vodafone Idea, which run older networks, have partnered with Nokia to deploy the IP Multimedia Subsystem platform needed for the service, while Jio, which operates only 4G and 5G networks, built its system in-house.
Under the order, an incoming call will display two fields: the number and a name. If the number is saved in the receiver’s phone, the saved name will appear. If not, the screen will show the name recorded by the caller’s operator at the time of the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. Calls from abroad will display the words ‘International Call’. Each operator will maintain a database mapping its subscribers’ names to their numbers, which the receiving operator will query when a call comes in from another network.
On privacy, the circular asks operators to follow a “security-by-design approach”, under which the query-response mechanism “itself enforces non-retention of the calling name identity upon completion of the incoming call”. The names of users who have opted for calling line identification restriction (CLIR), a facility that hides the caller’s number, “shall not be presented”.
The circular does not mention an option for users to switch off the service. When the DoT first sought the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) views in March 2022, the regulator recommended, in February 2024, that operators provide the service only on a customer’s request. The DoT sent the recommendations back in September 2025, and TRAI, in its response that October, agreed to make the service default with an opt-out. The industry has argued that some users may have reasons not to share their names, and telcos have raised questions on how names would be attributed for connections used by businesses or shared within families.
The circular addresses the business question. Holders of business or bulk connections may display a “preferred name” in place of the name in subscriber records, provided it is a trademark registered with the Trade Marks Registry or a trade name registered on the Goods and Services Tax portal. Operators must verify the name, and for new connections, original documents must be presented at the time of application. For existing connections, operators will have to set up a process for users to apply.
Operators have also been told to set up systems to receive and redress complaints about the service “in a time-bound manner”. The circular supersedes the DoT’s 21 November 2025 instructions on handling KYC issues during the rollout.
The idea of a network-based caller name service was floated as an alternative to apps such as Truecaller. In its 2022 consultation paper, TRAI had said such apps rely on crowdsourced data, which may not be reliable, and that operators would need access to a database of verified names to offer the service.
The order draws its legal basis from Rule 48 of the Telecommunications (Authorisation for Provision of Principal Telecommunication Services) Rules, 2026, which requires every authorised entity to present calling line identification “in a manner that is secured from tampering”. The rules, notified on June 23 under the Telecommunications Act 2023, replaced the unified licence regime with an authorisation-based system. The circular also cites conditions of the Unified Licence, which continue to bind operators yet to migrate to the new framework.
The circular does not address handsets. TRAI had recommended that all phones sold in India after a notified cut-off date support the service.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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