Minister: All Premium SMS Deactivated Today

Tifatul Sembiring Rapat Dengan DPR
Sumber :
  • VIVAnews/Nurcholis Anhari Lubis

VIVAnews - Information and Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring said that starting today, Tuesday at 12 a.m., all forms of premium short message service (SMS) will be deactivated automatically by the mobile phone operators.

This was stated in a circular letter No. BRTI 177/BRTI/X/2011 signed by the Chairman of the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI), Syukri Batubara.

The temporary termination of all premium SMS is related to the increasingly widespread practice of mobile phone credit theft by certain content providers (CP).

"The practice of phone credit theft has been troubling consumers. Users' phone credit is deducted without notification. It's unfair," said Tifatul in a press release received by VIVAnews, today.

The Information and Communications minister said one of the modes of phone balance theft includes the newly purchased prepaid voucher for Rp50,000 which only contains Rp36,000 of credit, as Rp14,000 has already been removed. According to the customer service operators, the deduction is due to default RBT (ringback tone) package in the SIM card, which has never been requested by phone users.

Another mode is a kind of promotion, which is initially free. As cell phone users forget, the operator will deduct phone credit in inappropriate ways.

"So, this policy is issued to anticipate the illegal practice of mobile phone credit theft. We cannot let this happen all the time. It is as if a massive theft over people's money is being committed," said Tifatul.

In addition to the simultaneous deactivation process, BRTI also asked all operators to stop all broadcast / pop-screen / voice broadcast SMSes until an unspecified time.

When asked if this policy would quash the creative industry of existing content providers including RBT business, Tifatul replied, "Not at all. Once the UNREG (unregistered) process is applied,all content providers and operators are welcome to directly offer REG again. For those who are interested may register, of course with awareness. So, no one feels cheated".

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VIVA.co.id
29 Maret 2024