In a press statement early this month, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said that it has served compounds to 12 companies for breaching their license conditions. The total amount of compound is RM260,000-00.
MCMC said that failure to comply with the Mandatory Standards for Mobile Content Services (MCS) is a breach of the licence conditions under article 2.2 of the standards set by the Application Service Provider Class Licence (ASP(C)).
The Malaysia regulator has previously issued numerous warnings to the license holders to improve their quality of service including those on the issue of dropped calls and promotional SMS messages. Unfortunately complaints from consumers regarding the quality of service kept on increasing as the telcos are still unable to satisfactorily resolve the problem.
SMS spamming is basically sending bulk text messages for the purpose of advertising, among others. This can be irritating for some mobile phone users as they did not opt for it or may have been charged for a service or content that they did not requested.
Below are the list service providers that were compounded are as below:
| NO | COMPANY | COMPOUND |
| 1 | iSENTRIC Sdn Bhd | RM 30,000 |
| 2 | Everest Mobile Sdn Bhd | RM 50,000 |
| 3 | MCM Messaging Sdn Bhd | RM 10,000 |
| 4 | MCOM Media Technology Sdn Bhd | RM 20,000 |
| 5 | Zed Mobile Sdn Bhd | RM 10,000 |
| 6 | D Tech Gateway Sdn Bhd | RM 10,000 |
| 7 | D Tech Gateway Sdn Bhd | RM 10,000 |
| 8 | Ice Mobile Sdn Bhd | RM 30,000 |
| 9 | Million Progain Sdn Bhd | RM 10,000 |
| 10 | Mexcomm Sdn Bhd | RM 50,000 |
| 11 | Celcom Axiata Berhad | RM 10,000 |
| 12 | Celcom Axiata Berhad | RM 20,000 |
Actions taken by MCMC are based on the breaches of the following Mandatory Standards:
(a) Para 35: “All MCS providers shall include the price information at the beginning of each SMS, for a chargeable content or a SMS which is sent at no cost to the customer.”
(b) Para 50: “All MCS providers shall provide in all its MCS promotional materials with information which is sufficient, clear, true, up-to-date and in a simple and straight forward language.”
(c) Para 69: “If the marketing SMS is an SMS which solicits acquisition or subscription, the relevant price shall be provided in the marketing SMS itself.”
(d) Para 70: “All MCS providers shall include as part of the marketing SMS their company name.”
(e) Para 71: “All MCS providers shall not promote the MCS in an inappropriate way.”
(f) Para 73: “In any promotional SMS sent, all MCS providers shall include a notification that the customer can opt out from receiving further promotional SMS by sending an “OUT” or “KELUAR” keywords to the MCS provider. Upon receiving these keywords, the MCS provider shall immediately cease sending out any further marketing SMS to this customer, using any short code(s) by the MCS providers, even if the customer has an active subscription.”
Non-compliance of article 2.2 of the ASP(C) standard licence conditions is an offence under Section 242 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998. If found guilty by the court, they could be compounded for not more than RM100,000-00 or jailed for not more than two years or both.
[Via]– Amanz
[Source]– SKMM
