The regulator of premium rate telephone numbers, Regtel, has ordered two Dublin-based firm stop sending "spam" text messages offering free hotel breaks to mobile users.
Red Circle and Realm Communications, have sent thousands of text messages to mobile-phone users over the past eight weeks, many of whom did not ask to receive the promotional offers.
The promotion tells users they have won a €325 hotel break if they make a call to a premium rate number. The calls cost at least €1.90 per minute and last for four minutes. The text messages do not tell people that they will have to pay for dinner and breakfast in the hotel to get a room. Advertisements for the "great Irish break" promotion have also been played on radio and television, prompting between 15,000-20,000 calls to the premium rate number operated by the firms in just six to eight weeks.
Mr Eugene O'Mara, of Red Circle, which provides content for the promotion, said the mobile marketing campaign had been very successful, accounting for 80 per cent of the premium rate calls. He said text-marketing was a legal grey area but denied the company was involved in spamming mobile-phone users.
Mr O'Mara said the firm would co-operate with any regulations brought in by Regtel and said it had now deferred its promotion.
Mr Pat Breen, the regulator of premium rate services, confirmed the firms had agreed to suspend the text message service following a request by Regtel. He said firms could not send out unsolicited text messages to customers under data protection legislation passed into law last year.
Regtel is finalising a new code of practice that will specifically outlaw text-message spamming on mobile phone networks from the autumn, added Mr Breen.
Under this code of practice it is expected that mobile phone users will have to specifically opt in to receive promotional texts. This initiative will attempt to prevent the same deluge of spam affecting mobile networks, which currently affects e-mail in- boxes.