"Call once" phone has recently become a focal point again.
First, an officer of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said that the case of high fee sucking did exist, then the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced: it was impossible for the telephone to suck high fees. A technically uncomplicated "high-fee-sucking phone" issue, after receiving a positive response from authoritative departments, instead found itself in an awkward situation. Industry observer Xiang Ligang said that from the user's perspective, what should be focused on now is not the problem of high fees being sucked, but the problems of users being harassed and charged.
Operators say high fee sucking is basically impossible
"From the current billing principles and technical handling perspective, we do not believe that users dialing back numbers will incur huge phone bills. The so-called hundreds of yuan per minute high fee sucking, as mentioned online, is impossible. Thus, the so-called five-level industrial chain does not exist," an unnamed operator billing professional told this reporter.
In order to find specific cases of the "legendary" high-fee-sucking, operators and major media outlets have recently launched collection activities, but no results have been obtained yet.
Ning Yu from China Mobile Business System Support Department also revealed in his blog that China Mobile is currently actively communicating with the media and public security departments, hoping to find an actual case of high-fee-sucking. However, he stated that there has still been no effective case feedback.
According to introductions, the reason why operators are currently highly concerned about the issue of fee sucking mainly considers two factors: one is to provide customers with a reasonable explanation through investigation, avoiding unnecessary panic among users regarding high fee sucking; the second is that operators need to investigate who the culprits behind the fee sucking are and how they operate, thereby informing customers on how to effectively prevent such occurrences.
Stepping out of the misunderstanding of high fee sucking and fee sucking
Although the possibility of high fee sucking is small, the harassment caused by "call once" phones to users is very real. When encountering those information service type calls, if users dial back, they will also be charged.
Industry observer Xiang Ligang expressed that from the user's perspective, what should be paid attention to now is not the issue of high fee sucking, but the issues of users being harassed and generally charged.
"Although from the billing principle perspective, high fee sucking cannot currently be verified. Personally speaking, as long as consumers pay fees they do not wish to pay, and are induced to pay, it is considered fee sucking. In this process, the operator is a passive beneficiary."
Regarding this statement, the aforementioned operator billing professional indicated that they are actually also victims of phone fee sucking.
"Superficially, operators indeed gain revenue from callback calls. But in the long term, this will affect the relationship between operators and customers, lowering corporate image, which is counterproductive."
Currently, there is still no fundamental solution found
Professionals indicate that for mass-dialing calls, operators can monitor them from the backend, "but operators do not have the authority to seal off numbers, and currently, there are no relevant laws or regulations granting operators this authority."
However, it was learned that operators are currently trying to block fee-sucking phones. Some users reported that when they dialed back, the response was a disconnected number, which is the result of blocking.
Although operators can monitor, it is only post-event investigation. For users, prevention is most important.
For this, the reporter consulted billing professionals from China Mobile and China Unicom. They both expressed that although users expect operators to prevent fee sucking through technical means, it is indeed difficult to solve this problem through technical means at present.
Operators say that what they can do now is to provide evidence through customer feedback and assist public security departments to the greatest extent possible, safeguarding users' interests.
It is understood that this noisy "call once" phone incident originated from a police warning notice published on the website of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.
Some netizens reflected that in these months of reports, the media first extensively promoted the phenomenon of high fee sucking, then after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology clarified that such phenomena basically do not exist, there were reports saying that public security departments had confirmed the existence of such incidents. "This makes people confused about which news is true and which is false, and who should be believed?" one netizen said.
In response, Xiang Ligang also appealed that the media should try to explain various existing problems clearly when reporting this incident, allowing the public to understand the ins and outs of the matter. Additionally, he expressed that the government and operators should also strengthen publicity work, timely informing users of their own efforts in this matter.