Conroy the Barbarian to crackdown on premium SMS services
Adam Turner says the much feared Senator Conroy is threatening to clean things up for mobile phone users.
If you've ever been blinded by late night television ads featuring naked college girls and love match quizzes, you know what I mean by "premium" SMS.
The technical term for it is "crap". The kind of crap that horny idiots buy late at night without reading the fine print - which says the provider will keep sending them messages, at five bucks or more a throw, until they tell them to stop.
Surely their dollars would be better spent at an adult book store. Umm, not that I'd know about that kind of thing.
Moving right along, the communications industry knew this day was coming. The Communications Alliance, a telecommunications industry lobby group, released a draft Code of Conduct late last year for premium mobile services.
The draft Code seems to contain some good points such as;
- A premium SMS or MMS service cannot be provided until the customer has sent an opt-in SMS message from the mobile phone, regardless of the mechanism that the customer originally used to request the service.
- Stricter obligations in subscription advertising requirements, including greater prominence of the word "subscription".
- For non-mobile subscription mechanisms, a requirement that, in all cases, a provider must send an SMS subscription request message to the customer's mobile phone including details of cost and frequency of services.
Since then the Communications Alliance has dragged its feet and it may have missed the opportunity to handle the problem with self-regulation which, as we all know, is a sweet deal which often means no regulation at all.
The consumer watchdog got stuck into the communications industry over premium mobile services at the recent Australian Telecommunications Users Group annual conference. "Today, the ACCC is putting the telecommunications industry on notice," said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel.
Of course we've all heard that kind of talk from the ACCC before. These are the same people who act surprised every time petrol prices skyrocket before a long weekend.
The ACCC is also pushing for the Code to require premium mobile service providers to use a 'double opt-in' mechanism, so a person requesting a subscription service is required to take an extra step to confirm their purchase. The watchdog also believes people should be given the option of completely barring premium services from their mobile number.
Now it's Senator Conroy's turn to play tough guy, in an effort to improve his much tarnished image (BTW according to Whirlpool, the Right Honourable Senator was sacked this morning, happy 01/04).
In typical Rudd government style, Conroy says he is considering perhaps thinking about doing something about the problem.
"There is strong evidence that suggests consumers do not have confidence in their telecommunications service providers," Conroy said in a classic understatement at this week's recent CommsDay Summit.
"The protracted development of the Mobile Premium Services consumer code has highlighted clear deficiencies with the co-regulatory framework. Improving the code development process is only one piece of the puzzle and effective consumer protection should be supported by an increased emphasis on enforcement. We need to provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority with faster, more effective incentives to encourage compliance with codes and regulations."
Conroy announced an "examination of the consumer code development process and the implementation of new code enforcement powers for the Australian Communications and Media Authority".
So there you go, the good Senator is looking into it. Just like he's looking into the NBN and mandatory net filtering. He's even entrusting the task to the ACMA, the same people who've done such an admirable job of managing the current internet blacklist. I guess we can rest easy, knowing it's in capable hands.
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Comments: 1
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gnome
Apr 3, 2009 7:45 PM
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Since the industry mouthpiece Commsalliance seems to have ignored most consumer concerns about the SMS cowboys, it's good that Senator Conroy has taken the issue on board. As part of the self-regulation the industry enjoys thanks to the previous government, CA was supposed to involve consumer representatives in code development but did not do so in other than token and ineffective fashion. And the so-called code resulting from this flawed process seems to be purely voluntary for companies to use or ignore. |