Legislators are promoting the proposal that aims to make it easier for the public to send messages on various instant messaging applications.
In the hearing conducted by the House Committee on Information and Communications Technology on House Bill 6344 or Instant Messaging Applications Interoperability Act, Bataan Rep. Albert Garcia urges service providers to make it possible to send messages between different instant messaging apps.
“This bill seeks to require the instant messaging service providers to enable interoperability in their messaging applications and provide penalties for non-compliance thereof. This is a relatively noble idea inspired and patterned after regulations introduced in the European Union or ER last year called The Digital Markers Act. The lack of platform interoperability often focuses consumers to stay with the application or platform even if they are no longer comfortable using them,” said Garcia.
With the proposal, a user using an instant messaging app can send a message to another application still using the desired app.
“This bill seeks to ease the burden of end users by imposing instant messaging interoperability between apps while ensuring communications remain encrypted from user to user. This means that users of different messaging applications can send messages and share images, voice messages, videos, and other attached files without changing their preferred online platforms,” explained Garcia.
Solon pushes for interoperability of instant messaging apps
The proposal is supported by several government agencies.
“The NTC would like to express the support to the passage of the bill, but we are respectfully requesting that we be given an opportunity to submit a position paper to discuss our stance, recommendations, and concerns regarding the bills and we would like also to respectfully request that we will hear from the TWG and the concerned private entities regarding how it will be implemented,” said Atty. Lucky Joy Domingo ng National Telecommunications Commission.
“The DICT can see the relevance and significance of this kind of bill to simplify processes of messaging. We are in full support in terms of integration and making this happen specially integrating this to multiple government agencies as well with the local government units,” said Department of Communications and Information Technology Undersecretary David Almirol.
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