Shanghai government suspends Sina, Sohu, Netease SMS service
The Shanghai government has suspended operations of the ""Short Message Union"", a short message system (SMS) service offered by leading Internet portals Sina, Sohu and Netease, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing a city announcement.
The suspension comes as part of a series of regulations issued by the Shanghai Communications Administration to manage the surge in popularity of SMS services in the city, the report said.
The union allows smaller websites to charge users via the larger portals' revenue sharing mechanism with Shanghai Unicom and Shanghai Mobile. The report said that some websites had used the system to charge for the viewing of pornographic movies.
""Its very difficult to monitor the actual business of our smaller partners - more than 90,000 websites have teamed up with us,"" the report quoted Sohu's local marketing manager Zhao Yurun as saying. ""But I don't think the new move will influence our profit much, as they contribute no more than 10 pct of our total short-messaging revenue"".
Other regulations are aimed at protecting consumer rights, such as the requirement that message providers offer a local service hotline, make it easier to cancel subscriptions, and ban companies from sending unsolicited fee-based messages, the report said.
""Some providers send unsolicited promotional messages to users without advising them of subscription fees and some bury information about cancelling subscriptions deep into their Website to maintain users,"" the report quoted Yu Zhe, a spokesman with the Shanghai Communications Administration, as saying.
Shanghai Mobile sent more than 7.8 bln short messages last year, the report said, while Shanghai Unicom sent 1.1 bln. Each short message costs at least 0.1 yuan
上海暂停新浪搜狐网易短信联盟业务
《上海日报》引述上海市政府近日发布的公告称，已暂停新浪网、搜狐网、及网易三家门户网站结成的短信（SMS）联盟业务。
该公告称，此次对这三家网站短信业务叫停，是上海市通信管理局对该市日益普及的短信服务业务加强管理的重要举措。
该报称，这家短信联盟允许小型网站通过大型门户网站在上海联通及上海移动中的席位向用户收取费用，已发现部分网站向用户提供有偿色情电影。
报道援引搜狐上海分公司一位市场部经理的话说，由于公司与90,000多个小型网站结成联盟，监视这些网站是非常困难的。但这些法规的出台不会对搜狐公司利润有多大影响，因为这些业务只占总短信收入不到10％。
报道称，出台法规的主要目的是保护消费者权益，例如要求短信提供商向客户提供服务热线，让他们可以方便地取消注册；禁止公司未经通知向用户主动提供收费短信等。
《上海日报》援引上海市通信管理局一位发言人称，一些短信提供商主动向用户提供推广促销信息但同时并不告知要收取短信订阅费，部分网站将取消短信订阅服务的信息放在很隐蔽的地方以留住用户。
报道提到，上海移动公司去年发送总共78亿条短信息；上海联通发送11亿条。每条短信费用最少为0.1元人民币。
