TCRA Director General Engineer James
Kilaba disclosed this in Dar es Salaam yesterday at a news conference
attended by all the mobile phone service providers across the country,
saying all operators had agreed to halt the adverts effective yesterday,
July 6.
Eng. Kilaba said the decision has been
made after the authority received many complaints raised by many mobile
phones users on the issue of advertising or promotion announcements
offered by mobile phone companies before a client call is connected.
He said as the regulator of
communications they wrote to all the six mobile phones service providers
on the matter and met yesterday to give them more clarification on the
matter which is against the Electronic and Postal Communications (Values
Added Services) and Consumer Protection regulations of 2015 and 2011
respectively.
He urged the service providers to abide
with the regulations and provide quality services to their customers as
the authority is satisfied that some of the mobile service providers are
not abiding with the regulation which has resulted to the raise of the
complaints.
According to the TCRA boss, those who
will go against the order or directives of the authority will face the
consequences whereby the maximum penalty is the revoke of the service
provider oper ating licence.
“As Communications regulator we are
aware of the matter which for some customers it’s of great disturbance
as we believe that when a caller makes a call, he or she might have an
emergency and needs to be connected directly and fast instead of
receiving a variety of advertisement announcements or music before being
connected, so we demand all the operators to stop it immediately from
today (yesterday), “ said Eng. Kilaba.
Giving more clarification on the matter,
Eng. Kilaba urged the mobile phones services firm in the country which
has the custom of providing to their customers with business adverts to
halt them and ensure they connect them directly without wasting their
precious time.
However Eng. Kilaba unveiled that
business adverts are not prohibited to be provided by the mobile phones
service operators but the only problem with the adverts is where they
are slotted by the operators and that has been a major problem to many
of their customers.
Meanwhile TCRA has as well advised all
Electronic media outlets in the country to abide with the code of
adversting and sponsorship to ensure that business adverts aired are
well and carefully prepared so as to ensure they do not distort the
public or to provide an image that damages Tanzanian culture and morals.
Furthermore the authority wanted media
to be aware that business adverts announcements contribute significantly
to the development of Swahili language or to demolish it as there are
some major challenges in the use of fluent language in some of the
adverts and leads which has resulted to misuse or misinterpretation of
some of the words among people in the community.
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