Most phone card holders are anonymous. Text-messaging via SMS is often used to organise social protest, but also criminal activities.

Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Asian governments want to bring short message services (SMS) sent via cellphones under their control. Many people send text messages via SMS to organise street protest, spread news, commit crimes and, some fear, prepare attacks.

In developing countries nameless, pre-paid phone cards are available at cheap prices. But governments want to change that. In September Malaysia ordered all phone companies to register pre-paid card users after a message carrying false news about the death of the wife of the country's Prime Minister quickly spread to the point that an official denial was required. Governments are defending such a step on security grounds.

Since last May, Thailand has required user registration for pre-paid phone cards to prevent terrorists from using them to carry out terrorist attacks.

Beginning this month, in China's richest city, Shanghai, with a population of 20 million, anyone buying a pre-paid card must provide name and show identity papers. According to local newspapers, till now people had the means to send "criminal" messages".

Last year, in Taiwan unknown users tricked people into paying ransom for allegedly abducted relatives. One reporter was called by a "kidnapper" who claimed he had taken his wife whilst she was there with her husband.

"This has become an issue over the last year, particularly in the Asia-Pacific," said Nick Ingelbrecht, principal mobile communications analyst for US-based research firm Gartner Group.

"There is a lot happening and the reasons are quite wide-ranging," he said, but "it's a way for criminal gangs to communicate."

In the Asia-Pacific region, about 53 per cent of the region's 670 million mobile-phone users are on pre-paid cards, and the proportion is growing, the Gartner Group estimates.

Few countries know the power of text-messaging better than the Philippines, where a lightning campaign brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in 2001 in a "people power" uprising that ousted then President Joseph Estrada.

At least 200 million text or SMS messages are sent every day in the Philippines—that's more than two for every Filipino.

Any attempt by Filipino authorities to limit or control text messaging has drawn fierce resistance and there are groups dedicated to protecting text messaging rights.

In both the Philippines and Indonesia, pre-paid cards are sold without the need to register names and numbers.

In Brunei, text-message rumours that a night-time exorcism would be held at one school drew hundreds of onlookers to the scene, prompting police to warn that anyone found spreading malicious gossip by text message could be fined or jailed.

"The main attraction of pre-paid in Asia is that these are low-income countries and subscribers want to control their spending," said Karen Ang, a Bangkok-based telecoms analyst for Citigroup. "But being able to buy a pre-paid card without giving up a lot of information about yourself is also an attraction."

Pre-paid cards are turning Asia into the fastest-growing telecom market, making up about 60 per cent of users in China and over 90 per cent in Indonesia and the Philippines in 2004, according to the Gartner Group.

Many users are reluctant to give personal details in countries whose governments do not respect human and democratic rights. Dealers are concerned that tight controls might affect their sales; they also say that they are not required to check whether names users give are true or false.

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