Phone-sex services come under fire

Phone sex operations use a wide array of tactics to work around telecoms regulations, occasionally violating the law and in other cases bending it in creative ways which makes prosecution difficult, said consumer advocates and telecoms officials yesterday.

"This issue is already at the point where we need to have a variety of government offices cooperating in order to do something," said Huang Chieh-shan (黃介山), a censor for the Government Information Office at a round-table discussion on the topic sponsored by the ROC Consumers' Foundation.

The phone sex services generally use the phone prefix "0204," which Chunghwa Telecom originally conceived of as "expert advice" services: callers pay an amount per minute to hear recorded messages from stock analysts, traffic reporters or lawyers.

Under the law, operators of 0204 numbers are not allowed to suggest the sex trade directly or indirectly in their recorded messages.

Although some 0204 numbers do offer stock tips and legal advice, many others offer sexual services, as a casual flip through late-night or adult TV channels will tell the average viewer.

"I don't see how moaning and groaning into a telephone qualifies as professional expertise," said Hanson Chiang (姜志俊), secretary-general of the ROC Consumers' Foundation.

The prices for the services range from NT$10 to NT$200 per minute, with some services demanding a minimum of 10 minutes per session.

Some of the operations apply for their operating licenses by calling themselves "beauty consultants," said Chang Chun-ming (張峻銘), who works with the 0204 numbers at the transport ministry's Directorate-General of Telecommunications.

Occasionally these businesses actually do offer beauty advice to women callers but those which don't ask for a "special service" categorization, said representatives at yesterday's discussion.

Cheng Shih-yi (鄭世怡), a social worker for a youth community organization, said he had been solicited for sex by an operator during his phone research into the 0204 numbers. At another number, however, he was given 10 minutes of skin-care advice.

Both numbers had racy television ads on a scrambled adult channel, he said.

"The first one was illegal, while the second one involved completely false advertising," Cheng said.

Some 0204 operations skirt the law by offering live chat instead of recorded messages, thus providing a service that the law currently does not cover.

But whether or not the businesses are legitimate, Chiang says, is still hard to judge. Some of the advertising is too racy for prime time.

In one ad, a woman in a white nurse's uniform rips her clothes off to her underwear, with text on the screen reading, "Can you handle it?"

The Government Information Office has devised a rating system for advertisements -- similar to that used for movies or television -- in order to play commercials appropriate to the anticipated viewing audience at a given time.

R-rated ads can show on scrambled adult cable stations 24 hours a day, said Ho of the GIO's advertising department, and only from midnight to 5am on regular channels. But many of the ads go beyond R-ratings, Chiang said, and verge on pornographic.

The GIO and Chunghwa Telecom have set up committees to review both the services and their commercials.

Head of broadcasting for the GIO Ho Nai-chi (何乃麒) said they issued 23 fines last year, at NT$690,000 each, for playing commercials that violate broadcast standards. Chunghwa caught 100 cases of illegal phone messages.