VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communication’s (MIC) inspectors still have not decided how to treat the three biggest mobile networks, which have “rifled subscribers’ pocket” by forcing subscribers use their services without any notice in advance.

The mobile network operators, including VinaPhone, MobiFone and Viettel, have been found as distributing the simcards readily integrated with some certain apps. They have been found as cooperating with digital content service firms to provide services to subscribers.

The problem is that the subscribers did not know that they accidentally used the services and had to pay for the services, because they were not informed about this before.

As a result, when they accidentally accessed the functions of the software integrated already in the simcards, they saw their money deducted from the accounts.

The MIC’s inspectors said that MobiFone, after integrating simcards with LiveInfo and SuperSIM, has cooperated with 17 content service firms to provide the information services for profits.

In 2012 and the first seven months of 2013, MobiFone and its partners earned VND150.5 billion from the services provided through the integrated apps.

Meanwhile, VinaPhone, with IOD and V-Live, and its partners created the revenue of VND20.7 billion within one year, from June 2012 to June 2013.

MIC has concluded that the mobile network operators have violated the laws when providing services without the consent of the service users.

In principle, services can only be provided once the users confirm they agree to use the services at the service fees set by the service providers.

After the violations were found, people expected to see the heavy punishment to be imposed on the mobile network operators. However, till now, the watchdog agency still does not know how to deal with the violators.

Nguyen Dinh Chien, Deputy General Director of MobiFone, said mobile network operators have been providing the services for the last five years already. Meanwhile, the regulations on integrating apps on simcards were only set up one year ago.

“Since the regulations came out after the network operators began providing services, it is impossible to ask them to stop providing the services immediately,” Chien said, adding that it would take time to do this.

Chien also claimed innocent, saying that MobiFone did not try to cheat subscribers.

“In principle, service users need to confirm their agreement on the use of the services. However, the technologies did not allow doing this 5-6 years ago,” he said.

The military telecom group Viettel also affirmed that the limited technologies did not allow users to choose “no” or refuse to use the services. Therefore, it has suggested a solution to the problem, with which the services would automatically be activated, while users would make a message to cancel the services.

Meanwhile, VinaPhone has promised to inform users about the service fees once the services are activated.

However, the suggested solutions cannot satisfy the MIC’s inspectors, who affirmed that these do not comply with the current laws on the service fee transparency.

The inspectors have stated that mobile network operators would be forced to stop providing the services if they don’t strictly obey the current laws.

TBKTSG