The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) wants to access the awareness and receptivity of the public to IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) registration before any decision is made.

MCMC Corporate and Community Infocomm director Adelina Iskandar said that the commission, through its Hand Phone Users Survey (HPUS) 2007, hopes to seek public acceptance towards this new inclusion for phone registration before implementing the suggestion.

IMEI or phone registration, a suggestion by MCMC, calls for hand phone users to register the serial number of their phones, which is believed to be an efficient move to combat hand phone thefts.

"As it is a long process, we (MCMC) are now doing our homework, and we hope to create a national database based on the findings of the survey," said Adelina.

The survey, conducted for the third time since 2004, will be launched on Saturday and is expected to run until July 25. The sample size of the survey is 4,925 units and roughly 5,000 hand phone users will be called.

Calls will be made from 2 to 9pm on weekdays and from 10am to 6pm on weekends and public holidays. Hand phone numbers of the participants of the survey will be selected by a random number generator.

Awareness level

Other than IMEI registration, the commission will also probe on three other issues, namely, mobile number portability (MNP), mobile banking, and international roaming.

"Many people don't know what is MNP. So through this survey, we would like to know what is the awareness level among the public for MNP, their opinion on charges for the service, and the waiting period that is acceptable to port their numbers," said Statistical and Knowledge Resource director Koay Hock Eng.

"For mobile banking, we seek to know their awareness of such service and the transactions they have done via mobile banking," he added.

According to Koay, the survey will ask core details such as gender, nationality, and age groups as well trend and experience questions, namely, average SMS or MMS per day and internet access via hand phone.

However, Koay stressed that the survey will not ask any personal information of the interviewee, such as name, IC number, house number, bank account number, and bank balance.

"We do ask for the road name, garden, city name and its postcode, but we stop there. The purpose of doing this is to determine whether the respondent is in the urban or rural area."

Obligation of secrecy

Koay also assured that all information provided by the interviewee will be kept in confidentiality.

He said that interviewers are under obligation of secrecy as spelled out in the MCMC Act 1998.

"All the calls will be made from MCMC Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) system and we will not hide behind the 'private number' mask," he said.

Moreover, he added, each interviewer will have his or her own interviewer code and that they are instructed to tell respondents their name and code if they were to be questioned by the respondents.

"Don't entertain the call if they are reluctant to reveal the information. If we get someone impersonating us, we will go hard on them."

Koay said that the survey had received good response since 2004. The maiden survey conducted in 2004 saw 71.1 percent response from the public and in 2005 and 2006 it received 79 percent response.

"This year, we want to push it 80 percent, or more if possible," said Koay, adding that the public can expect the findings of the survey to be released in mid or late August.