UAE adopts caller ID system disclosing name of contacting entity from private sector

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and the Digital Government have implemented the feature of displaying the name of the calling party on landline and mobile numbers registered in the name of private sector companies on mobile phones.

The move is in cooperation with "Etisalat" and "du", to be the first in the region to implement this feature.

The authority said: "The application of the feature comes to enhance the confidence of customers in the calls received from the numbers of private sector companies, and to reduce the problems caused by anonymous communications."

The authority announced in a press statement that the feature of displaying the name of the entity related to displaying the names of private sector companies in the country will be officially and gradually applied during the coming period, which began to be applied experimentally last May to the banking sector.

The feature of displaying the name of the caller, known as the "Kashef" initiative, identifies the customer with the party he is calling, even if he does not keep its number in the memory of his mobile phone.

This feature, launched by the Authority in cooperation with service providers, aims to reduce anonymous calls received by customers and provide information to the call recipient about the contact before he answers the call.

Customers trust

The authority indicated that it has enacted legislation related to this feature, which comes as part of the development system aimed at enhancing customers' confidence in incoming calls from private sector companies' numbers, and reducing the problems caused by anonymous calls.

Eng. Saif Bin Ghalita, Executive Director of the Technology Development Affairs Department at the TRA, said, “The TRA is working on the directives of the wise leadership to launch and implement initiatives aimed at enhancing customers’ confidence in the services provided by the telecommunications sector, and from this point of view we launched this feature that it enables customers to identify the names of the parties that call them, which gives them the freedom to respond or not, and also gives them a kind of reassurance when receiving the call and speaking with the connected party.”

Bin Ghalita added, "The Authority chose to implement this feature after studying a number of projects and best practices, and worked in the trial period and in cooperation with service providers to find solutions to technical challenges, and to make some modifications to service provider networks to fully activate the new feature."

Adhere to protection directives

The Authority had begun to apply this feature to the banking sector, to be applied to the rest of the sectors such as the health sector, hotels, education, etc., and this feature will be applied to all private sector companies during 2022, and this feature will include fixed numbers and mobile numbers registered in the name of companies private sector.

The authority emphasized that this feature is the first line of identification with the contact point, but with the presence of this feature, customers must abide by the directives of private authorities regarding not providing personal information such as account number, secret numbers, identification words, and others.