[photopress:mobilephoneuser.jpg,full,alignright]Starting next year, mobile phone users in China will have to register using their real names. This according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
Wang Lijian, of MII’s News Department, said the new rule will apply not only to new users, but also about 200 million pre-paid cell phone users.
About half of China’s 400 million cell phone users pre-pay for their mobile service through China Mobile and China Unicom. Most are not required to register before buying a new phone number.
Ministry officials said the new registration system would help curb the surging number of mobile phone crimes. The Ministry of Public Security has statistics which suggest that most mobile phone-related crimes are connected to phones which have been registered under fake names.
Will it mean less mobile phone users? Possibly.
Xu Junqi, vice-dean with the Policy-Making Institute of the Telecommunications Research Centre under MII, said, ‘The operators will suffer a temporary decrease in the number of consumers and short message services (SMS) as people may not like having to provide their ID cards for a phone number. The operators also have to invest a lot in updating their technical facilities and service network to meet the new requirement.’
But he stressed that the new system will benefit both mobile phone users and operators in the long term as it protects the consumer interests and reduces operators’ management risks.
MII experts participating in drafting the new system said that the system has included provisions to protect the privacy of personal information. Judging by the results of such provisions in almost every other mobile system in the world this is not realistic. If a database exists then details will leak.
How does the public feel? An online survey conducted by Sohu.com found that 44.9 percent of 1,911 respondents favoured using ID to set up mobile phone accounts, and 42.1 percent opposed it.
Source: China Daily