The Vietnam Military Telecommunications Group (Viettel) has been fined for automatically activating value-added services for dozens of millions of its subscribers without their prior consent, according to recently released inspection results.
Even though these are not paid services, activating them without any consensus from the subscribers is enough to be deemed violations, inspectors from the Ministry of Information and Communications said while explaining the reason for the VND75 million (US$3,530) penalty imposed on the Hanoi-based telecom group.
Viettel automatically activated the Combo Vas package, including the iMuzik, iSign, and Anybook services, for 12.8 million subscribers, while 23 million subscribers had the missed call notification service MCA activated without their knowledge.
The iMuzik service alone was automatically added for another 6.5 million subscribers, according to the inspectors.
IMuzik is a ringback tone service, which allows subscribers to let their callers listen to a song when phoning them, while iSign entitles users to display a customized message on the screen of the recipient’s smartphone, instead of the default calling screen of the device, according to Viettel’s website.
Anybook is an ebook reading service, while the MCA will notify subscribers via SMS of the missed calls occurring when their devices are offline.
A Viettel spokesperson said the company will strictly obey the sanction by the ministry.
The telecom firm added it only meant to invite subscribers to try out these services for free in a bid to attract new users.
An invitation for the Anybook service was sent via SMS, and when subscribers replied that they would not like to use the service, they would receive another message, saying they “successfully canceled the Default package of the Anybook service.”
The misleading message made subscribers think that they had been using a paid service, thus filing complaints to Viettel, according to the spokesperson.
“We stopped introducing these services that way immediately after receiving the complaints,” Le Huu Hien, deputy general director of Viettel Telecom that offered the services, said, adding the company also had a meeting to “chalk it up to experience and review the wrongdoings.”
Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Military-run telco fined $3,500 for offering services without users’ consent in Vietnam Related image(s)
0 comments:
Post a Comment