China's 200 million cell-phone owners who use prepaid cards will soon have to register with their telecom provider or face a cutoff in service. The new requirement is part of China's efforts to verify the owner of every phone number in the country as it tries to stem telephonic fraud and unauthorized transmissions, including pornographic or politically charged content.
| Since the Chinese have as much chance of stamping out pr0n as I have of winning a Nobel, I suspect it's the politically charged content' that they're going after ... |
The general plans for the new procedure were announced yesterday by a Ministry of Information Industry official interviewed on sina.com. Implementation is expected to begin by the end of the year, and phone customers will probably have six months after that to turn in their paperwork.
"It's unfair if we require only new mobile phone users to register and ignore existing customers," said Chen Yuping, a senior official at the ministry's China Academy of Telecommunication Research. "More important, the registration mechanism loses its effectiveness."
| Can't slip anything past old Chen ... |
Customers now have two choices when they buy a mobile phone in China. They can be billed for service at the end of each month, in which case they must register with the phone company by showing an identity card. Of they can simply buy prepaid phone cards almost anywhere on the street. The new rule will require the latter to show identification when they buy the device that activates their phone: the subscriber identity module, or SIM card for short.
By requiring registration from all cell phone users, China says it can do a better job eliminating short-message-system advertising spam, financial frauds, pornography and improper political commentary.
One can guess which is the most important... |