HOW often do you receive messages on your hand phone inviting you to participate in contests or subscribe to some form of services? Do you recall if you were informed that you would be receiving such messages when you signed up for the (phone) services from the operator?

In the Internet realm, sending out unsolicited and bulk e-mail or spamming is not acceptable to the majority of the user community. It is regarded as an act of abuse.

Numerous efforts, both commercial and non-commercial, have been initiated to put a stop or at least keep the incidents of spam to a minimum. In many cases, Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world would take action against those found to be involved in spamming activities.

Locally, the National Information and Communications Technology Security and Emergency Response Centre (Niser) is even working towards proposing a framework for a national policy on spam.

From a commercial point of view, however, spamming is a very low-cost platform for bulk-mailing (or mass marketing, if you like). I guess the interest of users comes first in this case. As such spamming is frowned upon by the community (as well as by lawmakers).

Now, how about the case of cellular phone users?

Aren't those messages (as mentioned above) unsolicited? Are they not "bulk" messages?

With "Yes" being the answer to both questions, it does not take a genius to conclude that they are spam messages as defined in cyberspace. Of course, there are differences.

For one the messages are short and comprise only text - thanks to the limitation of the short message system (SMS). I wonder what kind of messages one will receive once the multimedia messaging system (MMS) becomes more prevalent.

Another big difference is that on cellular networks, the "spam messages" are actually sent out by the operators/service providers themselves.

They may be working with partners, but guess which party has all the phone numbers and means to sent out those bulk messages?

For Internet users, there are tools available to enable them at least block out e-mails from known spammers. No such facility for handphone users. Although they know where those unsolicited messages come from, they can't do anything about it.

One may argue that the number of cell phone operators as "potential phone spammers" are far less than that of e-mail users - each of whom are potential e-mail spammers.

But as far as principles are concerned, it does not matter if the number is three or three zillion. A spam is a spam in whatever form and whoever it is from.

It's just not fair for consumers. Operators are using the facility to make more money while users are wasting time opening, reading and deleting those unwanted messages.