Many mobile phone users like to sign up for plans allowing them to talk for free if both the caller and receiver are users of the same mobile service. The plan may work well if the calls are made among family members or close friends, but how can the caller tell if the receiver uses the same service when he or she makes a cold call?
Control Yuan members listening to briefings from the National Communications Commission (NCC) on Monday put these and other questions to the agency.
According to NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉), the Control Yuan members said that some customers thought they were able to pay a monthly fee of NT$300 and talk for free when they are making calls within the network, but they ended up paying NT$3,000 or more because some of the calls were charged at out-of-network rates.
Chen said Control Yuan members wanted to know if there was any way by which consumers could be informed if they were about to make a call outside the network.
Chen said that consumers could call service number “57016” to find out if a certain mobile phone number was registered under the same service, adding that they would be charged the same rates as calling inside the network for making such an inquiry from their mobile phone.
Meanwhile, Chen said that the NCC would look at different deals offered by different telecoms operators and post the different information online.
Chen’s remarks coincided with an announcement yesterday by Chunghwa Telecom of a special offer that allowed its customers paying NT$983 or more per month to talk free of charge on same-network calls if they pay an additional NT$200 per month.
The nation’s largest telecoms operator decided to offer such a deal after Far Eastone Telecommunication and Taiwan Mobile — the nation’s third and second-largest operators respectively — introduced plans to reward their subscribers for making calls to numbers on the same network.
Meanwhile, Chen said that some Control Yuan members had shared their observations also on political TV talk shows.
They said these programs appeared to just hire the same group of so-called pundits to talk about various types of issues ranging from politics and the global economy to special cosmic forces.
“We have been observing this phenomenon for a while and have been thinking of ways to improve the situation,” Chen said.
“However, there is really not much we can do about it, as the Communications Basic Act (通訊傳播基本法) protects the right to free speech,” Chen added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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