The Wireless Application Service Providers' Association of SA (WASPA) is not tendering, and does not plan to tender, to be appointed the service provider responsible for maintaining SA's “do not contact” (DNC) registry.
The national registry must be set up in terms of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which came into effect on 1 April. The database will allow consumers to register their details to avoid being contacted by direct marketers.
Under the CPA, companies must assume all consumers do not want to be contacted unless they have written confirmation that a person's details do not appear in the database. The DNC is out on tender.
Currently, the most well-known such list is run by the Direct Marketing Association of SA (DMASA). However, until recently, the association was e-mailing the database to its 389 members, and this information was leaked to at least two non-members.
The DMASA, which has since moved to a secure SSL-certified Web site checking process, is bidding for control of the national do not contact list, which falls under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry.
Rumours abound
DMASA CEO Brian Mdluli recently, in an open letter to BulkSMS.com MD Pieter Streicher, accused WASPA of tendering for the database. Mdluli accused Streicher of being “too negative” of the DMASA, and of not working together with it to find a solution.
In the letter, Mduli says: “I am aware the organisation that you are affiliated to has tendered against the DMA to administer the new opt-out platform.”
Streicher says BulkSMS.com is a member of WASPA and the Mobile Marketing Association, but, as far as he knows, neither has submitted a bid for the registry.
Now WASPA chairman Leon Perlman says the rumours in the marketplace that the association wants to run the database are unfounded and false.
Perlman says running such a database does not fit in with WASPA's mandate or competencies, as the association is only a self-regulatory and lobbying body that promotes ethical behaviour in the industry and growth of the WASP sector.
Mduli declined to comment. It is not clear when the registry will come into effect.
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