KATHMANDU, AUG 29 -The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has initiated a process to devise a regulation aimed at checking spam SMS and emails, and it will be implemented from next fiscal year, the authority has said.
In response to a growing customer complaints of receiving unwanted SMSs, the authority had recently discussed with the telecom operators—Ncell and Nepal Telecom—on eliminating the problem of such text messages over their networks. NTA officials said they were studying international practices, gathering information about possible solutions and vendors and discussing with licencees to formulate the regulation. A few days ago, the NTA and telecom companies had also discussed with an Indian vendor—Tele DNA on issues of spam messages and solutions.
“It’s a high time that we enforced a strict regulation at the earliest to discourage spam SMS to safeguard customers,” said Ananda Raj Khanal, director at the NTA. He, however, said despite showing urgency, the work has not move effectively as the NTA had no active full board.
In recent months, there have been complaints from mobile users of receiving unwanted SMS, with some of the customers even reporting to have been cheated through such messages. Mobile users have been getting a slew unwanted requests such as likes on a Facebook page, advertisement of international websites, product promotion SMS and lottery prizes.
It has been observed that the number of unwanted SMS and emails have gone up along with the growth in the number of mobile and internet users. Khanal said the authority would speed up the preparation regarding the proposed director on fast track as soon as the NTA board gets a chairman. “We have a plan which includes regulating spam SMS on the mobile platform, holding internet service providers responsible for delivering spam emails through single directive,” he added.
Generally, telecom companies and third-party value added service (VAS) providers having agreement on short-code with operators send SMS to mobile users. Messages sent by telecom companies, VAS providers, with no customer agreement to receive while subscribing to the service, and messages that are not about similar products or services offered by telecom companies are considered spam. An official at the NT, which has been repeatedly criticised for circulating spam text messages, said they were seriously working to control the possible circulation of such messages. “SMSs are also sent to customers by VAS service providers but the government has no clear law to regulate them,” the official added.
The number of VAS providers and types of mobile VAS services have also increased considerably over the past three years. However, NTA’s request to the Ministry of Information and Communications last year to devise an effective mechanism for VAS content regulation, the work has not made any headway.
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