CNAP (Calling Name Presentation)

Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) is a telecom service that displays a caller's verified name, drawn from telecom Know Your Customer (KYC) subscriber-verification records, on the recipient's device at the point of an incoming call. Recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) following a consultation process, with the Department of Telecommunications framework approved in October 2025, CNAP represents a shift from blocking-based approaches to spam and fraud calling (Do Not Disturb registries, operator-side filtering, third-party caller-ID apps) toward directly correcting the underlying information asymmetry between caller and recipient. CNAP does not block any call; instead, it removes the anonymity that makes high-volume fraudulent calling economically viable, since a caller who must appear under a verified name faces both immediate recipient scrutiny and post-hoc traceability by investigators. The accompanying Calling Line Identification Restriction (CLIR) facility lets a caller withhold their name presentation, functioning as a privacy opt-out, though because disclosure is the system's default, this design choice inverts the 'privacy-by-default' principle generally favoured in data-protection law. The core regulatory concern accompanying CNAP's rollout is that a functioning nationwide identity-disclosure layer attached to the telephone network is infrastructure with obvious uses beyond spam prevention, making statutory purpose limitation and independent oversight of the underlying KYC data access the necessary safeguards.

• 1 CNAP = Calling Name Presentation; displays a caller's KYC-verified name to the recipient.
• 2 Recommended by TRAI; DoT framework approved October 2025; staged nationwide rollout from March 2026.
• 3 Shifts strategy from blocking spam calls to removing caller anonymity (an incentive-based fix, not a prediction-based one).
• 4 CLIR (Calling Line Identification Restriction): the opt-out facility letting a caller withhold their name.
• 5 CLIR being an opt-out (not opt-in) means disclosure is the default, inverting privacy-by-default principle.
• 6 Key safeguard debate: statutory purpose limitation to prevent CNAP data being used beyond call presentation.

CNAP addresses India's roughly 4,168-crore-spam-calls-a-year problem structurally, by removing the anonymity that makes fraudulent calling viable, rather than by trying to predict and block each fraudulent call individually.