Society
Official denies report on mobile real name registration
By Hou Lei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-03 16:58
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An official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said it has no plan to launch a real name registration policy for mobile phone users in Beijing in April, Wednesday's National Business Daily reported.
Earlier reports said the ministry will require new mobile phone users in Beijing to register their names with their numbers beginning in April. The current unregistered users will complete the registrations within the coming three to four years.
Wang Lijian, an official from the information department of the ministry, denied the report. In addition, China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telcom all said they have not received such notice from the authorities, according to National Business Daily.
China is endeavoring to crack down on spam short messages and those containing pornographic contents.
Some experts believe those messages are rife because a large number of mobile phone users are unregistered so it is difficult to trace a person who sends such SMS. They suggested a real name registration policy.
However, many people worry that the registration may lead to revealing their private information. Some said their mobile phone numbers may be illegally sold to others.
There are about 700 million mobile phone users in China, and it is estimated over 50 percent of them are unregistered. The registration would be a huge task.
Wang Liusheng, an industrial analyst from Enfodesk, told National Business Daily that telecom operators are not fully capable of implementing massive registration during sales.
At China Mobile's Beijing branches, mobile phone users have to register their real names with their numbers when applying for an Easyown service, which did not require such a registration before July, 2008. Easyown is a basic prepaid service of China Mobile and the number of its users accounts for 70% of its customers.
But users don't need to register if they apply for the service with agents of China Mobile, which are all over the city, the report said.
