Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) new drama!

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) new drama!

PTA spokesman Mohammed Younis Wednesday denied the existence of the plan, which has met with derision from mobile phone users in the country. "If at all we finally decide to go for this process, then we will prepare a list in consultation with the mobile
operators," Younis told a media representative.

In another conversation with CNN two days earlier, however, Younis acknowledged that the telecommunications authority had sent out a notice to carriers — but said that the agency was giving the operators more time to come up with a shorter list.

Earlier this week, three carriers – Mobilink, Warid and Telenor – received the notice, officials there confirmed.

In it, the PTA, which regulates cell phone and internet carriers in Pakistan, called on them to implement the ban within seven days. This would mean blocking text messages containing the offending words. Most of the 1,500 banned words were deemed sexually
explicit or obscene by the PTA, the officials said.

The words include "taxi" – often used to refer to prostitutes in Pakistan – "gay," "tongue," "homosexual," "intercourse," "condom" and "hole."

In the notice, which is available online, the PTA cited a law that bans the transmission of indecent and obscene messages. The notice says the banned words are part of an effort to cut down on spam and unsolicited text messages, the officials said. Last
month, the PTA banned thousands of websites containing pornography. But the latest about face on text messages appears to mean the PTA will not act on the notice, at least, any time soon.

How can they introduce a system that can detect these words in the email if they are spelled in somewhat different manner just like ‘taxi’ can be written as ‘taxy’ so that means that every word can have multiple different spellings. There is no point wasting
time on such trivial issues when our country is surrounded with other major issues.

If Pakistan will revive its position and list itself amongst the most developed countries in the world, people would not use that obscene language for our politicians and this dilemma will automatically get solved. We should first solve the root cause and
then look into these trivial issues.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=4817

Posted by Fahad Zafar on Nov 26 2011. Filed under Latest News, Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry