Consider raising prepaid subscriber promotion ceiling to 50%

The leader of the Telecommunications Department said he is working with the Ministry of Finance to study a proposal to increase the promotion ceiling for prepaid subscribers from 20% to 50%.

Previously, at the end of 2017, Circular No. 47 issued by the Ministry of Information and Communications clearly stipulates the promotion limit for network operators, which cannot exceed 20% of the scratch card value. For postpaid subscribers, the highest promotion level is 50%. The above limit includes the value of services, goods or material values ​​that network operators use for promotion. If telecommunications enterprises violate the regulations on promotion limits, they will be subject to administrative sanctions and tax collection for those promotion programs.

According to the explanation of the governing body, this adjustment of the maximum promotion level is to ensure healthy competition in the telecommunications service market. At the same time, this is also considered a more effective measure in preventing and handling spam messages, the consequences of spam messages, and promoting the development of postpaid mobile subscribers.

However, in reality, mobile businesses continue to compete to attract new prepaid subscribers, continuously launch promotional programs for prepaid subscribers to compete unfairly, and loosen management of subscriber registration, so the phenomenon of taking advantage to send advertising messages, threats, and malicious messages still appears widely.

The amount of spam messages generated from newly registered prepaid subscribers is still larger than the number of spam messages and spam calls that are filtered by the processing agencies. Meanwhile, postpaid subscribers are a group of loyal customers who provide full information to the network when registering for the service but rarely enjoy promotional policies.

The source of spam messages, spam calls, threatening messages, and scams comes from prepaid subscribers and it is very difficult to trace the subscriber's identity because the personal information stored by the network operator is inaccurate or incomplete.

However, after applying this policy, all three major carriers said that the 20% promotion tightening policy did not have much impact on the development of postpaid subscribers. Meanwhile, the consumption behavior of prepaid mobile subscribers (accounting for about 95% of mobile subscribers in Vietnam) decreased.