Do you use Truecaller to identify the name of the person calling you? If yes, the recent update concerning Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) is worth knowing. The Indian government is mandating its caller ID service in India from November 1, 2026. The Department of Telecommunications has ordered telecom companies to enable unknown caller name display by default for smartphones having 4G and above (5G, as of now) connectivity. According to reports, this implies 4G/5G smartphone users across the country will be able to see the name of unsaved contacts when they receive a call from next month.
Further, calls originating outside India will be marked as an “International call”. Telecom operators will not be allowed to store the caller’s name after the conversation ends. Meanwhile, a rollout of the service for landline connections and 2G and 3G cellular smartphones is being considered. However, a release timeline has not been shared.
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For the unaware, CNAP is India’s official caller identification system, which is undergoing trials in several regions of the country. Mandating its use implies telecom companies will be covering more smartphone users and regions across India. The first field will display the caller’s mobile number, followed by the registered name (for unsaved contacts), sourced from the telecom company’s records.
The caller details will be extracted from the customer’s photo ID submitted while issuing the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). To do this, telecom companies must maintain a database with numbers and names of subscribers. This repository should follow a security-by-design approach, implying the name of the caller cannot be retained through the “query-and-response” mechanism after the conversation ends. Subscribers availing the Calling Line Identification Restriction (CLID) will be excluded from this identification.
For bulk and business numbers, SIM operators may offer an option to choose a preferred name, which can overwrite the telecom’s database while displaying the name. It can either be a registered trademark or the name registered on the GST portal. Post-verification, the preferred name will be allotted to existing and new subscribers. For Truecaller users, this could serve as an alternative mechanism to identify callers and businesses.