30 Jan
2007

















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     connectivity

Access to Australia's IPND, connectivity in the land of spam and another settlement in US spam litigation.

     IPND

The Australian Communications & Media Authority (ACMA) has announced that following recent amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997 it will set up and administer a scheme for access by public number directory producers and researchers to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND).

The IPND is an industry-wide database of all listed and unlisted public telephone numbers, established in 1998 and managed by Telstra under the Carrier Licence Condition (Telstra Corporation Limited) Declaration 1997.

ACMA has released a draft of the Telecommunications Integrated Public Number Database Scheme 2007 (PDF) for public consultation, along with a consultation paper (PDF).

Under the proposed scheme, public number directory producers and researchers will be required to apply to ACMA for administrative authorisation to access the IPND. The looseness of access has been criticised by privacy advocates in the past.

Access to the IPND by researchers will be for specified purposes that the Minister for Communications, Information Technology & the Arts considers to be in the public interest and that are specified in a legislative instrument.

The instrument will list specific types of research that the Minister considers to be in the public interest, for example "health and medical research".

ACMA proposes that new and existing users of the IPND would be required to participate in the scheme, albeit with "special transitional arrangements" for existing users.

     Nigerian connectivity

TeleGeography reports that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has released statistics claiming that there are now over 32 million mobile lines and over 1.6 million fixed lines in that country.

The NCC boasts that five years ago there fewer than 550,000 fixed and mobile lines. What a difference an oil boom and sporadic anticorruption measures make.

The NCC claims that telco investment increased from US$50 million during 2001 to US$8.5 billion by the end of 2006 and that "the growth could be attributed to the liberalisation of the market", now promoted as one of the fastest growing telecoms sectors in the world.

     spam in the States

In the US the Federal Trade Commission has announced that TJ Web Productions, an alleged marketer of online adult content, has agreed to pay a US$465,000 penalty to settle spam charges under the Can-Spam Act.

Under the proposed settlement the marketer has agreed to abide by federal spam laws, including a commitment to include 'sexually explicit' in email subject lines and ensure that the initially viewable area of the message does not display explicit images. It has also promised that any spam will feature both an opportunity for recipients to opt out of receiving future email (including provision of a functioning return email address) and a postal address. TJ Web had used an "affiliate marketing" strategy through which it induced other businesses to transmit spam on its behalf. The settlement requires that the affiliates comply with the agreement between the FTC and TJ Web.

FTC action against seven companies in a crackdown on adult spam has resulted in US$1.62 million civil penalties, likely to be somewhat smaller than revenue gained by the spammers. In Australia the Federal Court imposed a more impressive $5.5 million penalty on a Perth spammer in 2006. The pain for TJ is presumably reduced by agreement that it can spread US$415,000 of the penalty over 12 monthly payments.

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