In an effort to combat the scourge of spam texts, the Ministry of Information and Communications is considering limiting mobile phone users to 50 texts per day.
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In the draft decree, the agency wrote that in addition to the cap, users who cross the 50 text line will have their service suspended.
“The proposed regulations will allow a mobile user to send maximum 5 texts within 5 minutes, 20 within an hour, and not more than 50 within 24 hours,” wrote Vietnam News.
Users who want to send more than 50 texts per day would need to register with their register with their service providers. However, some have taken issue with this policy:
“There are a huge number of new subscribers, and there is no available database to check if the ID cards [spammers] use during registration are valid,” Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc admitted as he addressed a law-making National Assembly meeting last weekend.
Vietnamese telecoms have also protested the proposed legislation, saying that many users, especially students, send significantly more than 50 texts per day.
“These [customers] can send as many as 300 text messages a day,” a Viettel representative told VnExpress. “We will suffer earnings losses if these subscribers are allowed to send 50 messages per day at most.”
A Vinaphone spokesman highlighted yet another concern – limiting texts will likely drive users to free messaging apps, resulting in additional profit loss.
After receiving this feedback, the Ministry of Information and Communications said that it will further study the regulation and “demanded” service providers take the appropriate steps to reduce spam numbers.
