Stopping barrage of promotional messages simply a dial away
Cellular phone users can stop acquiring promotional messages on the handsets by dialling codes, said the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) in a notice yesterday.
The notice comes amid complaints from users to be bombarded with numerous marketing messages regularly. Due to receipt of so many messages, many important messages sometimes remain unnoticed, they said.
Mobile phone operators and BTRC officials said the scope to prevent the promotional messages from to arrive had been set up for several years.
However, subscribers were unacquainted with the facility. And neither the BTRC nor telecom operators have made users aware of the scope.
Anyone unwilling to get marketing SMSs can dial shortcodes and activate the USUALLY DO NOT Disturb (DND) option.
To activate the service, Grameenphone users need to dial *121*1101# and Banglalink users *121*8*6#. For Robi and Airtel, it is *7#, said the telecom regulator.
After the BTRC notice, that was issued to the media for broadcasting, many mobile phone users started dialling the codes to avoid the flow of the promotional messages from various products and service sellers.
Yet, many have not been able to activate the DND option, with a return notification saying, "Sorry, your request failed due to technical reason."
Some got notification such as 'connection problem or invalid MMI code.'
Some were primarily successful and got a notification that said the request will be processed within 72 hours or immediately.
Mahbubur Rahman, a government official, said he received 10-12 messages daily.
"It really is annoying," he said. "It ought to be the choice of the clients whether the person really wants to receive such messages or not."
Soon after the BTRC notice, Rahman followed the instruction and used the code. He got the message, which said the request will be processed next 72 hours.
Contacted, BTRC Vice-Chairman Subrata Roy Maitra said almost all of the cellular phone users were unaware of the DND as the operators didn't campaign about the feature among the subscribers.
"We have asked the operators to see their subscribers and ensure the service. We have also taken steps to improve awareness among the mobile phone users," he said.
On the issue of the issues faced by subscribers to activate the DND service, he said the BTRC would check out the issue.
SM Farhad, secretary of the Association of CELLULAR PHONE Operators of Bangladesh, said the scope to check on the flow of promotional messages by dialling code have been in place. However, persons were not that much aware.
