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  • What: Regulatory requirements for making and receiving voice calls within India
  • Eligibility: Only India-registered businesses can rent Indian numbers and use domestic routes. Non-India businesses must use international routes (higher rates)
  • Media anchoring: Both call legs must originate and terminate in India. Cross-border routing causes call failure
  • Number series: Landline (022, 080, etc.) for service/transactional only; 160-series for BFSI only; 140-series for promotional calls (see provisioning guide)
  • Consent required: Cold calling is prohibited. You must have explicit digital consent before commercial calls, or face UCC penalties
Regulatory requirements, eligibility rules, and compliance setup for voice calling within India.

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Eligibility

Only businesses registered in India can:
  • Rent Indian phone numbers
  • Make domestic calls within India
  • Use India domestic routes
If your business is outside India, you must use international routes. This means calls are placed at international rates and display a US or international Caller ID — not an Indian number.

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Requirements

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Media Anchoring Rule

Both legs of a call must originate and terminate within India. Violating this causes calls to fail with violates_media_anchoring hangup cause.

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Compliant Call Architecture

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Number Series Regulations

TRAI mandates specific number series for specific call types. Using the wrong series is itself a regulatory violation — complaints arising from such calls are treated as UCC regardless of consent.
Cold calling is prohibited in India. You need explicit digital consent before making commercial calls, and must comply with TRAI guidelines. Calls made without valid consent are treated as Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC). See UCC Management for enforcement details.

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Account Setup for India

If you need both India and international calling:
  1. Create two separate Plivo accounts with different email addresses
  2. Sign up for an India data region Plivo account