Key Point 3: Contents and/or information service providers and CMTS providers shall inform...

Contents and/or information service providers and CMTS providers shall inform their respective subscribers of their option to pre-terminate their existing subscriptions.

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Recent NTC Memo could kill CP Business

Abe Olandres July 20, 2009 · 2 min read

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The NTC has made amendments to the MC03-03-2005 which regulates contents/information providers to initiate the â€œopting-inâ€ of subscribers to services through push messages. It’s been the focus of a lot of issues and disputes on vanishing prepaid loads.

Normally, content providers (CP) will randomly blast free ringtones or ringback tones for free (usually to promote a popular movie or event, like a concert). However, in order to get the free ringtone, one must subscribe to the weekly service. The succeeding tones are then charged to the subscriber.

This practice is now disallowed after the NTC made the following amendments:

Push messages shall not be allowed. Subscriptions or requests for contents and/or information shall be initiated by the subscribers.
Commercial and promotional advertisements, surveys and other broadcast messages shall be allowed only if prior consent from the subscribers is secured.
All subscriptions for the delivery of contents and/or information made prior to the effectivity of this Circular shall continue to be honored until the expiration of the subscription. Subscribers with valid subscriptions prior to the effectivity of this Circular may opt to terminate the subscription prior to expiration. Contents and/or information service providers and CMTS providers shall inform their respective subscribers of their option to pre-terminate their existing subscriptions.

One source who’s into the CP business tells me this amendment could kill as much as 90% of the revenues generated by the industry. The telcos are closely cooperating with the NTC to monitor the Content Providers’ activity on “push messages” and I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of lobbying happening right now.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

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55 Comments

Lance Bertotti · 14 years ago

wonderful post, very informative. I ponder why the opposite experts of this sector do not notice this. You must proceed your writing. I am confident, you’ve a huge readers’ base already!

zorann · 14 years ago

Yuga, how much are the telcos paying you to post this? “Recent NTC Memo could kill CP Business” – give me a break.

Text credit is not a product that spoils or is finite like food, water, or electricity and is purely electronic. It can be generated out of thin air. The telcos are already earning a lot of money by imposing an expiration date on these text credits and in effect forcing the users to load frequently. So tell me, why would the recent NTC Memo kill 90% of their business?

Obvious talaga kapag binayaran ang author ng isang article.

Ronald · 17 years ago

Globe found another way to eat up our load!

Did some of you notice that lately, most (not all) of the text messages you are receiving are duplicated?

On the other hand, when you try to send an SMS, the first attempt will give you a Failed error message then on the second attempt, the message will be sent.

I tested it and I got charged for two messages though the first attempt was not successful. the test message that I sent only says “This is a test.”. The test message was received twice by the recipient.

Haynakerrrrr Globe talaga.. para-paraan grrrrrrrrr

Jazzeline · 17 years ago

Yay! No more spam on my phone. Globe is a major culprit in this, so they may be the one who will be losing their 90% revenue. Its because of this spam that I am now buying prepaid cards.

blankpixels · 17 years ago

i’ve been a victim of these push messages from sun cellular. i noticed that whenever i have regular load credits, after a few hours, my load will just drop down to 0 ‘coz of all the unauthorized ads they send me. and, take note, i didn’t accept any kind of ad or subscription from them. i even called sun’s cellular’s customer service hotline and they couldn’t give me a straight answer.

this should’ve been done a lonnngggg time ago.

jose · 17 years ago

Good for them that there no burdensom penalty imposed like what happened to intel.

mike · 17 years ago

@Ton

I disagree completely with you premise and I think you do not understand the amendments. This blocks CP from the initial contact, unless you imitate it. So he choice is yours whether you wish to get spamed or not. You are free to ask to be spamed as you wish.

The basic premise here is so important that the rest is immaterial. This stops one of the many “gotcha” business the have sprouted up here. The purpose of these businesses is to trick greedy people into subbing to a service for the 1 free ringtone, game or whatever. Once they sub then they are charged for every subsequent text. It will drain a pre paid load fast. That is what Yuga is talking about.

Gotcha business are a plague upon people. If you or your GF or whoever is into that business then I wish you go straight to hell.

Once they finish tackling these small potatoes, I wish they will go after the banks and the gotcha tactics of the credit card industry.

Ton · 17 years ago

@yuga

Thanks. Yeah I think understand the memo, its the logic of it that I cant come to terms with :)

I’d still argue that while this may benefit consumers now (if that is at all true), it would be counter productive in the future. The end does not justify the means.

Nice post btw! :) I just realized how rude I was not to say that on my first post/novel.

Calvin · 17 years ago

si enrile ata may pakana neto. anyway, it’s a good move for the benefit of the consumers.

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 17 years ago

@Ton, I believe this memo only covers CPs, not regular folks like your GF, parents or friends (unless of course they run a CP business with your telco). So you’re correct that any Joe Schmoe can still buy a prepaid SIM and spam you to kingdom come.

Ton · 17 years ago

I’m not sure I understand the other comments, but allow me to point out a few things…

1. I’d like to DECIDE MYSELF what annoys me. I don’t need the NTC to decide that for me. My ex-girlfriend annoys me, and as things go, I should petition for the NTC to ban her from using a celphone too.

2. “Commercial and promotional advertisements, surveys and other broadcast messages shall be allowed only if prior consent from the subscribers is secured.” ….So instead of sending me text-spam, they send me “invitations” to receive text-spam….I don’t see how that changes anything.

3. I don’t quite comprehend the argument on messages being “unsolicited”. Its like saying “People greeted me through text on my birthday without me asking them to. Damn all of them for sending unsolicited text.” From the same logic, the NTC should ban all messages from my boss, and my mother in law.

4. “Push messages shall not be allowed.” Ahh, right. So now I have to log-on to a server to “Pull” my text messages like email?

SMS=PUSH. Thats the whole concept of it. How exactly does this change that technology?

5. What is the correlation of unsolicited text to vanishing load? You see, what I’m more interested in is statistical data on how many — how should I say this politely — “more responsible” users suffer from this “vanishing load” phenomena everyone is talking about. I’d bet my MacBook the numbers wouldn’t be so compelling.

Fact is people get suckered into these things by ACTUALLY REPLYING and AGREEING to them. The way I understand it, the NTC is protecting the SMS using public, because apparently people cannot think for themselves, and they get duped from their peso very very easily. Thanks.

Bottomline: “You can’t open a window and only let the nice things in. You just have to know which is which.”

jessie · 17 years ago

owssss? alam ko you’re a part of Globe… it could kill some of your profit if that’s what you mean. Imagine this million of texters thats a million of profits! iba pa ung ninanakaw nyong load! di ba??? sobra sobrang profit ipamahagi nyo naman…..

sylv3rblade · 17 years ago

finally. It took quite a while but I’m damn happy that the NTC has taken action.

Adrian · 17 years ago

naku po patay ang chikka, egg, gma interactive at abs

juntariman · 17 years ago

Spam SMS are intrusive… It’s our right to be free from annoying messages…

Tiger · 17 years ago

Yahoo! No more spam. Use more of your mandated power NTC. Kudos!

Because of the memo, I think the industry will be able to adjust to this new reality and will bounce back. There are other means of bending the NTC rules and they will definitely be creative in this.

The NTC should address also spam which comes from people who randomly send unsolicited text regarding cash loans, bank loads, different product info and alike.