The legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday delayed its review of a proposed amendment to the Telecommunications Act (電信法) mandating telecom carriers to purchase next-generation networks (NGN) to filter telephone calls from overseas.
The amendment, proposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男), received cross-party support from 24 legislators and seeks to combat telephone fraud, after “telephone scams” were ranked the No. 2 public complaint in a Cabinet survey conducted in November last year.
Wang’s amendment proposed that all telecoms carriers should be required to take measures to stop such calls, for example by installing NGNs.
Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信), the nation’s largest telecoms carrier, is reported to have effectively filtered calls from overseas using NGNs. Statistics from the National Police Agency showed that phone scam cases dropped from 70 cases per month to 40 cases in January.
Wang also proposed that the cost of purchasing the NGNs should be listed as deductible when telecoms carriers file their tax returns. Any telecoms carrier that failed to take action to prevent or curb telephone scams would be liable to a penalty ranging from NT$300,000 to NT$3 million (US$9,600) and continued additional fines until the necessary changes were introduced.
Most lawmakers on the Transportation Committee supported the amendment, but it drew a mixed reaction from government officials and other legislators.
Kao Fu-yao (高福堯), director of the legal affairs department at the National Communications Commission (NCC), said the commission was in the process of drafting its own amendment to the Telecommunication Act. He said that the NCC’s amendment would also emphasize telecom carriers’ responsibility to help prevent phone scams and asked the committee to halt Wang’s proposed amendment until the NCC submitted its own version.
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