On 25 April 2025, the Thai Telecommunications Association (TCC), together with several telecom operators, signed a memorandum of understanding to officially push forward the construction of the DE‑FENCE anti-fraud platform project.
The signing ceremony was presided over by Prasert Jantararuangtong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Economy and Society, and held at the NBTC office building on Chaeng Watthana Road, Bangkok. Led by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, the project involves 15 collaborating parties including telecom service providers, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), public security authorities and financial institutions. Its development aligns with the Thai government’s policies targeting call centre scams and fraudulent spam SMS.
DE‑FENCE is a national anti-fraud prevention platform covering both scam voice calls and risky text messages. Its core functions include risk alerts for end users, preliminary risk screening for suspicious calls and SMS, and cross-agency number verification. It enables cross-checking of number risk data with police, banks and other organisations to open channels for government-enterprise anti-fraud data collaboration.
The beta version of the platform was scheduled for public launch on 1 May 2025, with mobile applications available for download on Google Play and Apple App Store. Positioned as key infrastructure against tech-enabled crimes, it addresses the limitations of isolated operator-level blocking through multi-party information sharing and joint response.
For the A2P SMS industry, DE‑FENCE is an industry collaborative risk-control system independent of NBTC regulations. The platform will aggregate blacklists of risky Sender‑IDs, non-compliant numbers and phishing links. Operators and regulators may share fraud intelligence to improve detection and blocking of non-compliant A2P traffic. Beyond mandatory compliance requirements such as Sender‑ID registration, link verification and PDPA privacy rules, enterprises need to monitor the platform’s blacklist mechanism to avoid having their numbers or sender identifiers flagged as risky entities.
