ENG-2009 — Page 425

Communications, the Media and Information Technology | 353

Notice has been issued. Notably, the number of reports has declined from 8 700 in 2008 to around 6 100 in 2009.

In addition to the enforcement of the UEM Ordinance, the Government has contributed to international co-operation on anti-spam measures. For example, Hong Kong continued to co-operate with other signatories of the Seoul-Melbourne Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Co-operation on Countering Spam, an international community on anti-spam co-operation, to share experiences and exchange intelligence worldwide. Hong Kong has also established spam reporting channels with other jurisdictions including Australia, South Korea, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Mainland.

A community-wide Anti-spamming Task Force has also been set up to review the effectiveness of the UEM Ordinance and advise the Government on policies and measures to tackle further the problem of spamming. In order to assess better the extent of the problem of person-to-person marketing calls, which are currently not regulated under the UEM Ordinance, and to assess the views of the public and the industry towards such marketing calls, OFTA commissioned a survey of public opinions and collected views from the industry. Based on the results of these surveys and having balanced the importance of person-to-person calls as the means of marketing to small and medium enterprises, the Government is of the view that Hong Kong should first proceed with a self-regulation scheme through a voluntary code of practice (COP) for compliance by the industry. The CoP will contain measures to ensure good practices, such as maintaining an in-house do-not-call list and establishing a system effectively to respond to unsubscribe requests.

Protection of Consumers

OFTA has been working with the industry on a number of measures to heighten customer protection and satisfaction levels in Hong Kong. These included a pilot alternative dispute resolution scheme named 'Customer Complaint Settlement Scheme' (CCSS) to refer selected cases of contractual disputes which cannot be resolved between the service providers and the customers to independent professionals for adjudication on a voluntary basis, a series of consumer education programmes on fixed and mobile broadband services through seminars, newspaper columns, online games, and internet portal, and the publication of Consumer Alerts from time to time to provide consumer tips on telecommunications services.

To enhance consumer protection further, the TA will issue a voluntary code for communications service contracts which aims to provide the industry with guidelines on the drawing up of service contracts and further guidance on what constitutes. fair, balanced and reasonable service contracts for both consumers and the industry.

International Activities

Hong Kong has been an active player in international telecommunications forums. In addition to being a member of the Mainland delegation to conferences and meetings convened by the ITU, Hong Kong also participates as an independent member in the meetings of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) and the Telecommunications and Information Working Group of the Asia-Pacific Economic