Good news! Beginning this month, telephone customers (whose phone numbers start with 13/15/18), will receive monthly bills sent by operators via message so that they can know more clearly about their detailed expenses, as required by MIIT.
Actually, many of the extra charges are caused by the annoying crank calls we answered. However, they may soon cease being an annoyance. Led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), 13 government departments are taking a series of steps through December of 2019 to crack down on crank calls and the illegal collection of personal information, according to a directive published on July 30.
Telecommunications operators are to take responsibility in regulating telemarketing and examining the qualifications of numbers starting with 95/96/400.
As technologies are used to alter caller identification (CID) that could misguide users, operators are required to forbid such behavior. Also, technological systems will be improved to be more effective in recognizing and intercepting unauthorized calls.
Telemarketers now should get the approval from their listed users before reaching them, and marketing calls ought to be made during reasonable hours of the day.
Users are encouraged to report unapproved marketing calls through various media. Rule-breaking telemarketers will be listed and publicized as discredited enterprises, and their marketing behaviors will be limited or forbidden.
In the meantime, government agencies also promise a crackdown on individual information leakage and telephone-related crimes like fraud, extortion, blackmail, and fake advertising.
Though it is important that the government should maintain strict supervision in the area of telecommunications, the main responsibility still lies on telecom operators. They are supposed to provide better telecom services to the public instead of offering favorable prices to discredited telemarketers.