In an effort to fight mobile pornography, Chinese telecom operator China Mobile has announced that it suspended all of its WAP service partners' ability to charge for services as of November 30, 2009. This applies to all of its WAP wireless value-added service partners in China, regardless of a partner's propensity to disseminate pornography.
China Mobile will now implement an overall examination, with the aim of eradicating pornographic websites from its network.
Prior to this stunning announcement, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched five measures a few weeks ago to fight pornographic content on the mobile Internet and the ministry said the subcontracting of servers, which were preliminary provided by telecom operators to some service providers and then were subcontracted to mobile phone pornography websites, is also a reason for the spread of pornographic content.
Wang Jianzhou, president of China Mobile, told local media that China Mobile has suspended charges from all service and content providers that signed WAP service fee collection agreements with China Mobile and China Mobile will immediately implement an overall examination in various areas, including service names, service contents, and promotion channels. It will prevent errant WVAS providers from conducting service promotions through third parties and will require them to make an information security responsibility commitment and promise they will cut all possible profit relations with pornographic websites.
Wang revealed that for the next step for fighting pornographic websites, the company will launch a series of new measures aimed at securing the airwaves from sexually-explicit materials.
By 18:00 on November 29, 2009, China Mobile had reportedly blocked 626 mobile phone pornographic websites, including 478 from overseas servers and 148 from servers in China.
