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A Unified SMS Service Number Comes into Focus(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)BEIJING, Jan 12, 2006 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --With the new year in full swing, the Ministry of Information Industry of China, the telecom watchdog in this country, endorses new regulations in a bid to unify mobile phone short message (SMS) service codes of four Chinese telecom carriers, as well as further strengthening monitoring and inspection of all service providers. The new regulations will come into effect soon, and by that time the ministry will call back some decision rights from telecom carriers, but they will still take charge of access service. Such move of the ministry will trigger downright shape-up in value-added telecom service sector. As for thousands of Chinese short message service providers, it is a writing on the wall. In terms of the new regulations, the ministry will take back all short message service codes step by step, instead, a new unified service code 1066 will come into use. And each service provider will get a unique identity code to allow them to register in platforms of value-added short message of China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Netcom. Lately, MobNIC (Mobile Network Information Centre) of CMCA (China Mobile Communications Association) started to use 50120 at the end of 2005, which was the first unified mobile telecom service number in this country. By sending short messages to 50120, mobile phone users of China Mobile and China Unicom, the two largest mobile telecom carriers in China, can get information they want to check. During the past few years, Chinese telecom operators have been laxly managing and supervising service providers. To misconducts and wrongdoings of service providers, telecom carriers have done nothing but fining symbolically. So far local telecom regulators have been informed about the new regulations. Though change of service codes involves a series of problems such as background data modify and charging system adjustment, an executive from Guangdong Unicom says that it is technically operable. Latest statistics shows that by the end of 2004, China totally issued more than 110,000 short message operation licenses. Now, for China Mobile alone, it has about 1,000 service providers, and the number for the whole telecom industry is 2,000. Looking ahead, a large number of unqualified service providers will be wiped out of the market, and those responsible and reliable service providers will survive and grow. From the aspect of big service providers, they will lose some brand image that is generated by previous service number, in the other side, a unified service code will save them a lot of marketing and operating costs. For small and mid-sized service providers, they are waiting for new opportunity to regrab the market. During the first ten months of 2005, China's mobile phone users sent 176.06 billion short messages, according to figures released by the Ministry of Information Industry. If each text message costs CNY 0.1, the business had generated a total of CNY 17.6 billion by the end of October last year. Mobile phone short messages have been the pillar for value- added transactions in the mobile industry, and various new businesses and applications are emerging in succession. Platforms like WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), JAVA and BREW (binary runtime environment for wireless) enable Internet-connected phone users to customize their cell phones by downloading applications, email, music and mobile games. (USD 1 = CNY 8.0802) From eNet.com.cn, Page 1, Wednesday, January 11, 2006 [email protected] |