Hi all, Here's a news report from the Philippines for those who might be interested about policies on SMS.
Regards, Fernando -------------------------- This story was taken from www.inq7.net -------------------------- http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=71994 NTC weighs move to temporarily bar broadcast SMS First posted 11:09pm (Mla time) April 08, 2006 By Erwin Lemuel Oliva INQ7.net THE NATIONAL Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is weighing plans to temporarily disallow local operators from pushing broadcast text messages promoting products and services to local subscribers. This came about with continuing complaints from local subscribers including one from Senator Aquilino Pimentel, NTC Deputy Commissioner Jorge Sarmiento told INQ7.net. Some complaints alleged that unwanted broadcast text messages charge subscribers once they receive it. Operators, however, denied this. "We read about the Senator's comments on text-based advertising. We have been meeting with local operators discussing plans to amend our guidelines on broadcast text messages. It needs more teeth," Sarmiento added. "We might stop allowing them [operators] to send broadcast text messages to subscribers until we resolve this issue," the NTC official added. In a public hearing last month, local operators have argued that its content providers are responsible for sending broadcast text messages to subscribers, not them. NTC, however, rejected the operators' explanation, asking them to quickly resolve the issue. "It is a lame excuse that they would blame content providers," added Sarmiento in an interview. The NTC announced last month that it will revise an earlier set of rules on broadcast messaging after learning that local consumers are still getting "spammed" with unwanted text messages. NTC Chairman Ronald Solis said that some content providers of local mobile phone operators are not complying with the agency's policy on broadcast text messaging. Possible revisions would include requiring content providers to use a common access number when sending broadcast text messages, the NTC chairman said. Under the existing NTC rules, mobile phone operators and content service providers are prohibited from sending unsolicited commercial text messages to local subscribers unless they have given their explicit permission to operators to subscribe them to the service. The new regulation on text spam adopts an "opt-in" policy when dealing with unsolicited commercial text messages or text spam. Under the NTC policy on broadcast messaging services, a subscriber who has not opted-in into broadcasted messaging services will not be charged for such messages they receive. Subscribers who do not reply to these broadcast or pushed messages will be considered to have opted-out and such messages should be stopped or subscribers may opt-out without being charged, the NTC rules said. The new rules also state that broadcast messages will not be sent between 9 p.m to 7 a.m, except for paid subscriptions. NTC will also require broadcast messages to display the names of the senders as well as the valid addresses or numbers, to which subscribers can send their requests to stop any broadcast messages. The new rule on broadcast text messaging will apply to both short messaging service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS)-type of broadcast messages. The NTC Commissioners are set to meet next week to decide whether or not to temporarily disallow operators from sending broadcast text messages to subscribers. ©2006 www.inq7.net all rights reserved Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mobile-society" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-society -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
