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You might also have noticed that the unsubscribe function accompanying at least some of the MMSs were chargeable at a rate of R0.50. Considering that Vodacom has roughly 23.6m subscribers in South Africa it stands to reason that the company could potentially have earned R11.8m if every one of its SA subscribers opted out of the MMS campaign.
However, in an official response, Vodacom says: "The MMSs in question were not sent to our entire customer base but only to a seeding percentage of contract customers with MMS enabled phones."
Moreover, Riaan Groenewald, operational director at Multimedia Solutions, the company contracted by Vodacom to design and dispatch the MMSs, says the unsubscribe rate for the MMS campaign was a minuscule 0.02%.
Thus, profiteering from a chargeable unsubscribe service was probably not the motive behind the campaign.
The real motive?
The question then is: Why would Vodacom go to all the trouble of awarding a potentially lucrative contract to Multimedia Solutions to design and dispatch MMSs to its subscribers if profit wasn't the motive? (Incidentally, neither Multimedia Solutions nor Vodacom would divulge the value of the contract, though it's rumoured to be around R1.95 a MMS.)
Vodacom spokesperson Dot Field explains: "The festive season MMS campaign was a specific promotional campaign aimed at informing and educating customers about MMS."
Of course, the new technology also opens up a can of worms in terms of legality, since many consumers would describe Vodacom's unsolicited MMS campaigning as nothing more than unwanted spam.
Though conventional wisdom has it that spamming is illegal, Leon Perlman, chairperson of the Wireless Applications Service Provider Association (Waspa), says current legislation is weak concerning the issue. "The legislation doesn't define spam clearly. It only refers to unsolicited commercial communications," Perlman says.
According to section 45 of the ECT Act, anyone who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers must provide the consumer with the option to cancel his/her subscription to the mailing list. The sender must also disclose the source from which they obtained the consumer's personal information if requested by the consumer.
'Not aimed at marketing'
Waspa also employs a strict code of conduct to discourage its members from distributing spam. Nonetheless, Perlman says he can't say whether or not Vodacom is guilty of spamming with its latest MMS campaign. "It would depend on the contractual specifications."
Interestingly, Vodacom couldn't say whether or not its contracts gave subscribers the choice to opt out of receiving unsolicited communications. Part of the company's official response read simply: "Vodacom does not believe that the MMSs were spam orientated. The MMSs were informative and not aimed at marketing a chargeable product or service."
Nevertheless, the opt-out function on at least one of the MMS campaigns was chargeable at R0.50.
Vodacom says that was a mistake and that Vodacom customers who may have been inadvertently charged for such SMSs will be refunded.
