Regulating mobile short messaging service (SMS) is nothing
new. Many countries around the world have developed guidelines and/or policies
to regulate business-to-consumer SMS services. I for one hate it when I receive
unsolicited messages on my mobile, and wish the regulator in my county could do
something about that.
The telecom regulatory authority of Egypt announced
yesterday that SMS providers should obtain a license before sending messages
over mobile networks in Egypt. When I first read the news I thought my wish had
finally come true and I would no longer receive “spam” on my mobile. But after
reading through the news, I realized I was too optimistic, and got to
understand that the issue was not about the legal framework needed to regulate
this whole business and protect consumers. It was rather about monitoring procedures
being introduced to allow security agencies to read messages. All this comes in
the lead up to the parliamentary elections that Egypt will witness next month,
and the presidential elections in 2011.
Politics aside, few observations are worth mentioning despite
the little information available thus far on the subject, and the lack of any relevant
information on NTRA and MCIT
websites. The reports only talked about news services and named the ministry of
information and the press supreme council as the entities authorized to grant
licenses to service providers. So NTRA has nothing to do with such licenses.
What does that mean? It simply means that those licenses are not about mobile
services, but rather about content. The other part of the puzzle is the fact
that security agencies are going to monitor the messages, identify the senders
and the recipients, read the content, and decide which messages to pass and
which to block. There is no mention of any regulations about the service
itself: the relationship between the sender and the service provider, the
sender and the recipient, and the rights of each party. This is in essence the
real work that any regulator has to undertake. Regulators are not and should
not be there to monitor or help other entities monitor what end-users do on the
networks. Let alone privacy and freedom of expression rights, which I don’t
think they exist in our laws.
And of course I will continue to receive unsolicited
messages on my mobile as long as they do not contain any political stuff the
“censor” may opt to filter.
