Regulation by the Committee for Organizing Value-added and Bulk SMS Services

Value-Added Services and bulk SMS services, also known as VAS are a type of SMS service that gained attention in Iran due to fraudulent activities enabled through their use. The decisions made by the committee are aimed at organizing and defining the duties of the committee, granting licenses to companies in the VAS field (issued by the Ministry for Islamic Guidance, communications, and digital media), investigating violations and penalties in this area, ensuring their enforcement, examining the possibility of compensating users for damages or creating “SMS irregularities,” reviewing the process of handling complaints and lawsuits in this area, launching the SMS complaint system in the bulk SMS area, reviewing the process of issuing bulk SMS licenses, reviewing the production and approval of content intended for SMS, and available sources on this topic. The committee also approved the launch of an online identity verification service. The emphasis is on verifying the identity of SMS system owners, establishing a violations committee, obligating the Ministry of Communications to enable the management of value-added SMS for subscribers, and technical security verification mechanisms for SMS senders.

One part of the committee’s decisions on the type of SMS message to be sent is as follows: 

• Sent SMS messages must be equipped with a MASK (non-numerical systems instead of numerical ones). The SMS tariff with MASK should not incur any costs to the operator. 
• If possible, Persian titles should be used. 
• Sending SMS messages with a MASK from foreign systems to the country’s SMS network is prohibited. 
• Producers and aggregators of value-added services must obtain a license from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance.

Some of the regulations includes:

• Regulations on online advertising  (April 2017)
• Content regulations for digital messaging apps (April 2016)

This working group also approved other regulations, which do not seem to have much relevance to bulk messaging. For example, the regulation passed on December 15, 2016, suggests that at the time of setting up imported mobile phones in Iran, at least one Iranian app store should be installed on them.

Another action related to the thirteenth session of the working group in April 2017, is the allocation of an electronic ID card for digital content for channels with 5,000 or more members on social networks. The code is issued after verifying the identity of the channel owner.