|
|
14 December 2004
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party plans to ban prepaid cell phones which it says are used mainly by criminals. Reports indicate that Vodafone KK, the Japanese unit of the British mobile giant Vodafone Group PLC with 1.5 prepaid users will be most hurt by the ban. Vodafone says however it is trying to confirm the identities of customers to combat scams. Japan's top mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo has 93,000 prepaid-phone users out of 46 million DoCoMo users. Reports indicate that criminals make calls on prepaid phones, generally to elderly people, falsely claiming to be police officers or lawyers dealing with a son or daughter in trouble, and demand cash be transferred quickly into a bank account to save their child. Sometimes they pretend to be the children themselves. The European Business Community representing more than 3,000 European companies has decried the proposed ban.
|
|
.gif){kind=spacer}