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Following is a question by the Hon Lau Kong-wah and a written reply by the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Mrs Rita Lau, in the Legislative Council today (November 4):
Question:
It has been reported that some companies sent out chargeable short messages (SMS) to the subscribers of mobile phone numbers, and most of those chargeable SMS were sent with a sender code using "50" as the first two digits, and requested the subscribers concerned to enter letters or numbers in order to start using the services described therein. Yet, the SMS did not indicate in advance that fees would be charged for the relevant services, resulting in many old people, women and children having to pay additional service charges without being aware of it. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the number of complaints received from members of the public about chargeable SMS and the amount involved in each of the past three years; and
(b) whether the authorities will consider regulating the aforesaid chargeable SMS; if they will not, of the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
(a) Since January 2009, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) began categorising all complaints related to the billing of mobile service. It is thus unable to provide figures on complaints related to SMS delivering chargeable contents before this date. The number of such complaint cases received by OFTA from January to September 2009 is 44. The amounts in dispute range from less than HK$20 to around HK$4,000.
(b) If misleading or deceptive conducts are involved in the provision of services by mobile network operators (MNOs), OFTA may commence investigations under section 7M of the Telecommunications Ordinance. There is no exception to SMS. OFTA has also studied the practices of service providers on providing charge information of SMS. The results indicated that service providers generally included charge information in the short messages. However, in individual cases, the charge information was not displayed at the beginning of the message on the screen of the handset.
To help consumers to be properly informed, OFTA has urged MNOs through daily contacts to deliver clear messages about the charges to the customers. OFTA plans to discuss with the trade shortly over how to improve the arrangements of delivering the charge information. In addition, OFTA is planning to publicise a "consumer alert" on its webpage shortly to remind consumers to read carefully the terms and conditions before agreeing to use a particular service carried by SMS. OFTA will continue to monitor the situation and, if necessary, strengthen public education and assess if the implementation of further measures is warranted.
Ends/Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Issued at HKT 14:51
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