Mobile Service providers are not allowed to provide phone gambling services : ICCC

Gambling services should not be offered on mobile networks in Papua New Guinea,  Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) commissioner and chief executive Paulus Ain, has said. 

He said offering of gambling services on mobile networks would require inter government agency cooperation to address this issue.

“The ICCC had previously looked into the issue of gambling services offered to customers through text messages”, Ain said.

He was responding to questions on the issue yesterday.

“For any gambling that should occur in any setting must be licensed by Gaming Control Board to do that. “Several times we have handled this and said, look you (mobile network operator) are not entitled to do this.

“You only should be providing call services or internet services and what is prescribed under your licence. “This has gone into hibernation mode until it has just been raised it again which is good. We will look at it again.

“That was our stance in the past but it has just gone dead.”

ICCC special projects officer Jacqueline Waffi highlighted that there was a need to address this in collaboration the National Information and Communication Technology Authority that had the enforcement power to deal with this matter. 

Certain mobile service providers in the country have been engaged in providing gambling services  on their network without considering who participate in such gambling. In Papua New Guinea, more than a quarter of the population are teenagers below the age of 16  and are  participating in phone gambling  through SMS and it is a cause of concern.  The National/ PNG Today