Asia tries to put SMS genie back in its bottle

Mark Bendeich

KUALA LUMPUR: For Asian governments, text-messaging is no longer a matter of twiddling their thumbs.

Asia is cracking down on a technology that has become a powerful social tool, used to organise mass protests, sow wild rumours, perpetrate crime and, it is feared, trigger bombs.

From Southeast Asia, where authorities say they are motivated by security and public-nuisance concerns, to Greater China, where scams and spam seem to be the major worry, text-messaging by anonymous mobile-phone users has caused a huge, ringing headache.

In the developing countries of Asia, most mobile-phone users are faceless because they use pre-paid phone cards, which can be bought for a few dollars without giving a name and address.

But anxious governments are changing all that. This month, Malaysia ordered phone companies to register all holders of pre-paid services after text-messaging gossip-mongers hit a raw nerve with false talk that the premier's ailing wife had died. The rumour grew so large, he felt compelled to deny it.

Thailand moved to register users of pre-paid phones in May, describing it as part of efforts to stop terrorists using mobile phones to set off bombs. Thai security forces have become targets for a campaign of bombings in the country's mainly Muslim south.

Shanghai, China's richest city with 20 million people, will require registration of pre-paid users from September to tackle text-message fraud, the Shanghai Daily said at the weekend.

Last year, Taiwan also sought to identify pre-paid phone users, fed up with conmen using the cover of anonymity to separate gullible people from their money with scams ranging from simple credit-card tricks to bogus kidnappings.

One Reuters reporter got a call from a "kidnapper" demanding ransom for her husband -- who was sitting right next to her. "This has become an issue over the last year, particularly in the Asia-Pacific," said Nick Ingelbrecht, principal analyst on mobile communications for U.S.-based research firm Gartner Group.

Few countries know the power of text-messaging better than the Philippines, where a lightning campaign rallied hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets in 2001 in a "people power" uprising that ousted President Joseph Estrada.

At least 200 million text or SMS messages are sent every day in the Philippines -- that's more than two for every Filipino and earns the country its reputation as the world's SMS capital.

Any attempt by Manila to limit or control text messaging draws fierce resistance and there are groups dedicated to protecting text messaging rights. A proposal to impose a tax on texting was shelved this year after stiff public opposition.

Pre-paid cards are turning Asia into the fastest-growing telecom market, making up about 60 percent of users in China and over 90 percent in Indonesia and the Philippines at end-2004, according to Gartner. In the Asia-Pacific, including Japan, about 53 percent of the region's 670 million mobile-phone users are on pre-paid cards, and the proportion is growing, Gartner estimates.

Like the Philippines, Indonesia allows pre-paid cards to be sold without the need to register names and numbers, though text messages have been blamed there for everything from bomb hoaxes to spreading false rumours of imminent disasters.

In the spirit of free speech, the Indonesian president even gave out his mobile-phone number in June and invited people to send in complaints. The move backfired as thousands of people responded, crashing the line. His administration then set up a new system with several numbers, and reading a selection of text messages is reportedly part of his regular morning routine.

China is also starting to exorcise its text-message demons. The Shanghai Communications Administration has just ruled that new users of mobile phones must give their real names and copies of their identity cards in an effort to cut down on text-message spam and fraud, the Shanghai Daily said.

(Additional reporting by Jerry Norton in Jakarta, Stuart Grudgings in Manila, Michael Kramer in Taipei and Doug Young in Shanghai)