China's texters to lose
anonymity By Ralph Jennings
BEIJING - A plan to register millions of
prepaid mobile-phone users in China will bring new
inconveniences to subscribers, including
foreigners, but could offer opportunities for
foreign-invested telecommunication companies,
industry experts say.
The Ministry of
Information Industry is working on a way to
register an estimated 200 million mobile-phone
users who pay in advance for services such as
China Mobile's Shenzhou or GoTone
accounts, said Zhao Zhiguo,
deputy director of the ministry's
telecommunications administration.
Mobile-phone registration will be done "in
a fair way", Zhao said in late December. He did
not specify registration procedures or a timeline,
but he said it could unfold some time this year.
Chinese authorities will register prepaid users to
help the country fight fraud, text-message spam
and attempts to attend political gatherings, state
media say.
Shanghai has piloted a
registration system since September 1 after a Chongqing pilot program
that expired in 2003. The state-owned Shanghai
Daily said in December that the nationwide
campaign could take effect this year.
Telecom analysts expect the dominant
mobile provider, China Mobile, and runner-up China
Unicom to register users by copying foreign
passports or Chinese citizens' identification
cards, as China Mobile does now for new GoTone
accounts and some youth-targeted M-Zone discount
calling plans. They do not know what other
information will be required or whether the
government will close down the countless middlemen
who now buy subscriber identity module (SIM) cards
in bulk and sell them to the public with no
questions asked.
The complex registration
system is expected to take shape in phases,
starting with a media campaign to warn users that
they must register or have their service cut off.
Spam is thought to be an important reason
for forced registration. Unsigned mobile-phone
text ads for air tickets, store openings and class
enrollment peeve ordinary Chinese mobile users,
who cannot block phone message senders as they
could e-mail spammers.
Anonymous users
also send fraudulent text messages involving
"phishing" or other scams, such as a batch that
went out in the first week of October seeking
people's bank-account details by claiming to
represent the bank. Craig Watts, a self-employed
consultant in Shanghai who got the bank-fraud
message, said freedom from unwanted text messages
would outweigh the "hassles" of registration.
"When I heard the news, I thought wow, that's not
such a bad thing," Watts said.
Shanghai
Daily said in December that the registration would
also let authorities figure out who sends
pornographic images or "politically charged"
content. Police in Beijing say they cannot
track the users of unregistered mobile numbers.
About three-quarters, 74%, of China Mobile
subscribers are unregistered. The rest are billed
monthly. But telecom analysts say the registration
system, whatever it turns out to be, will
inevitably cause minor complications that could
affect foreigners in China as well as common
Chinese users.
Foreigners stationed in
China must make time to register their numbers,
said Mark Natkin, managing partner of Marbridge
Consulting in Beijing, who does not think the
system will be unduly inconvenient.
"I
think there's a high likelihood that registration
stations may be set up at those mobile-phone
stores, where consumers also buy SIM cards, that
can accommodate the registration terminals and
connect to the registration network," Natkin said.
"Many operate during evenings and weekends."
Later, the government could access
registration databases to trace anyone doing
business in a questionable legal area, analysts
say. "It's safe to assume that the Chinese
government will have whatever access it needs to
this information to help with investigations,"
said Dave Carini, business development manager
with Norson Telecom Consulting in Beijing.
Illegal deals would probably be spotted
before other targeted content, said Eric Harwit,
Asian studies professor at the University of
Hawaii.
"I don't think the government can
really sort out the many billions of SMS messages
for passages that might have destabilizing
political content, though it might be easier to
catch discussion about, say, drug trafficking or
other blatantly criminal activity," Harwit said.
"But registering people would have a chilling
effect, in that people would know they could
potentially be linked to illegal messages and
activities."
Last year, the China Banking
Supervision Committee joined the ministries of
Public Security and Information Industry in
setting up an SMS (short message service)
fraud-filtering system. Police are also letting
phone users report fraud on a special website.
Analysts say it's too early to tell how well that
system is working.
Telecom consultants
suspect mobile-phone providers could also sell the
registration databases, illegally but with a wink,
to commercial spammers. A detailed database could
let spammers or con artists target foreigners or
the employees of a specific company.
"I
wouldn't rule out commercial uses either, though
China Mobile is unlikely to recklessly sell
sensitive information on its high-end customers,
given how much effort it expends to keep them
happy," Carini said.
Foreign companies may
also want to bid for the registration database
design, Natkin said. He said foreign-based system
integrators and hardware-software "solutions"
providers might offer packages to modify billing
and settlement systems, as well.
"You need
to have a system that will handle and track all of
that," Natkin said. "It's an opportunity for
companies that sell that type of equipment,
software and services."
Telecom providers,
if required to monitor their registered users for
illegal text messages, may also seek foreign firms
to design a system to check every message fast
enough to avoid delays in sending messages,
especially during holiday peaks, said Chris Han, a
senior analyst with Norson. Phone companies are
decentralized by province, Han said, so
potentially China Mobile and China Unicom branches
throughout China will want unique message-check
systems.
Ralph Jennings is a
Beijing-based foreign correspondent.
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