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Staff from mobile service provider Vinaphone instruct clients on how to use their services. —VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Giang |
Checks in HCM City and Da Nang will follow.
The checks were necessary because numerous violations were still occurring two years after regulations for the management of pre-paid subscriptions had been introduced, said the deputy director of the ministry's administration of social order department Nguyen Cong Son.
Many pre-paid mobile phone subscribers used the services to harass others; detonate explosives or illegally plug into other people's networks, he told a workshop to review mobile services.
An example was a pre-paid mobile phone subscriber who used the service in an attempt to detonate a home-made bomb at a pagoda in northern Thai Binh Province last year.
The device did not explode because it was damp.
Warning
Pre-paid mobile phone users found to have registered incorrect personal information would be required to re-register or have their services denied, warned deputy Information and Communications Minister Le Nam Thang.
Subscribers who tried to register incorrect information for negative purposes would be punished and publicly named, he said.
The Information and Communications Ministry's Communications Department deputy director Nguyen Xuan Tru said most of the transgressions occurred when customers bought their phones.
Vendors pre-registered millions of potential customers to entice them into making their purchases.
The most common transgression was not saving customer registrations or not committing the registration to paper.
Up to 80 per cent of vendors either did not have computers or their computers were not linked to the service provider network.
Information and communication ministry teams have inspected more than 26,000 customer registration points or agents throughout the country and imposed fines totalling VND1.1 billion (US$56,100) during the past two years.
They found 4,821 incomplete but authorised contracts.
The General Statistics Office says Viet Nam had more than 150 million telephone subscribers as of June - 80 per cent of them mobile phone users.
The number of pre-paid mobile phone users accounted for almost 90 per cent of mobile phone subscribers - one-third of them in Ha Noi, HCM City and Da Nang. — VNS
