Mobile phones make life easier. You can reach people and information wherever you go. And you can be reached. The increasing services such as short messaging have made telecommunication cheaper and cheaper. For 10 cents (US$0.012), you can send a message containing 70 characters. Meanwhile, you can receive information messages for a reasonable price.

However, not everyone is happy with such "value-added" services. Complaints about unwanted services erupted recently. Some users said they were disturbed by frequent text message services, to which they had not subscribes. These messages ranged from sports news, entertainment and jokes to downloads of music and pictures. To make things worse, users cannot unsubscribe by themselves.

A Mr. Chen tried to cancel the joke messages several times but failed. Finally, he had to change his phone number to stop it permanently. China Mobile, the telecom operator explained such "value-added" services by saying: "We only collect payment as a surrogate."

Previously, I never used to check my mobile phone bill. Last week, I logged on to the China Mobile website to find that I had been charged an extra fee of 6.90 yuan. The fee went to some websites, which I had never logged on to. Outrageous! I called the China Mobile service centre, which told me that they were not clear about how these websites charge for different services.

The fee is related to my request for information from the China Mobile menu. I did not know that these buttons on the menu were provided by websites. Should I have known it, I would not have requested this information. I had this bad experience because of registering my mobile phone number to send text messages on such sites.

Like me, a lot of other users have no idea what is being included on their phone bills. We have trusted the China Mobile network. No wonder major portal websites have revealed optimistic financial reports recently. The short messages service for mobile phone subscribers is the single largest source of profitability. And telecom operators including China Mobile can increase their earnings by offering these websites access to their network.

Apparently, it is a good idea for China Mobile to provide additional services to increase its attractiveness. Since these are options, consumers can choose not to have them. If consumers are forced to receive them, they are no longer value added. Nobody would like his or her phone to ring all the time. Without controlling how these services are subscribed to and charged for, China Mobile will lose its credibility. The long time spent on efforts to create a good brand image would be tarnished.

Sick of these unwanted services, I would rather choose a clean cell phone whose only function was phone calls.

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