ICSTIS's remit is obviously premium rate services and most other regulation is restricted to marketing activity. Whilst it goes without saying that Spam is unacceptable, there are many areas that are not specifically covered by these guidelines, such as:
- Recommended / permitted times for sending a Business SMS message (my own bank's daily SMS bank balance is sent out at about 6.15am each day)
- Recommendations on the frequency of messages
- Information on the sender
Is this an area that any other SMS providers / aggregators have a view on?
Is anyone aware of any work that's already been completed or is underway? My current plan is to:
- Try to drum up some interest, smstextnews.com seems an excellent forum but I'd welcome other thoughts
- Assuming there is some interest, send an open letter to all the potential participants that I can think of
- Use an online tool like this to work up a first draft, before finally
- Putting it to the MDA for promotion / accreditation.
Hopefully I'll complete step 1 in the next couple of days
4 comments:
I'd definitely agree the industry needs something. There seems to be an increasing amount of companies in the industry that turn a blind eye to spam, and without some sort of regulatory control or code of practice to fall back on we as an industry are powerless to stop our joint reputation being dragged through the mud.
The biggest culprit lately seems to be sending out spams to Orange customers offering them a free camera phone upgrade, and telling them to call an 0207 number. Most people think it's actually from Orange, but as far as I can see it's just a phone reseller fishing for business.
Someone out there must have this lot as a customer? If you know who it is, do the right thing and stop it eh?
Hi Alex,
Thanks for this. Spam is obviously a key area, although theoretically this is covered by other regulation.
Are there any specific topics that you would look to include.
I hd envisaged categorising by:
Outbound Requirements
Inbound Requirements
Minimum Service Levels
Something that may come under an additional topic of pricing/legalities is the UK mobile networks' definition of 'international'. I'm sure you've witnessed the same occasional weird and wonderful changes over the years that I have seen, with Manx, Guernsey, and Jersey numbers suddenly becoming 'foreign' to the mainland UK networks. The latest example I've come across is Manx being charged as an international text destination by T-Mobile and Three - even though it's clearly within the UK numbering range.
As a lot of the industry relies on the offshore mobile networks to provide UK long number ranges for numerous reasons (more sensible pricing, greater flexibility, actually want the business!), I do feel that it's becoming an issue.
Consumers need to know clearly how much it will cost to text a number, and it shouldn't be left up to the aggregators and service providers to deal with the complaints from the end users when they see the cost appear on their phone bill, or deducted from their PAYG balance.
As far as I know it wouldn't fall within the remit of ICSTIS, and I'd imagine Ofcom would argue that each operator is free, within reason, to set their own costs on a per destination basis.
The MDA isn't the only association who should get behind this. Although ICSTIS covers premium rate services, a lot of the best practices that come out will inevitably impinge and impact on certain premium rate services where regular SMS are a feature. In addition, there's the Mobile Marketing Association, the Direct Marketing Association, the Institute of Direct Marketing, The Institute of Sales Promotion, 160 Characters, MoMo (UK chapters at least), the GSMA, the IAB, etc etc. It's not an insignificant task. Although that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
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