Starting June 2007, sending unsolicited electronic message in Singapore will be charged as civil offence. The online document can be viewed here.

Summary of the Bill (please READ the online document for clarification, I might summarized it incorrectly):

1. It applies to commercial email, commercial SMS/MMS
2. It doesn’t apply to telemarketers
3. unsubscribe request is effective maximum 10 business days after the submission of the unsubscribe request
4. It applies if the SPAM committed in Singapore (sender/organization is physically reside in Singapore)
5. sending email to addresses obtained by harvesting email address in the internet is ILLEGAL
6. Buying email address list obtained by harvesting email address in the internet is also ILLEGAL
7. The damage is not to exceed SGD$25 per message, and not to exceed SGD$1 Million in total, unless the plaintiff able to show that the SPAM has caused damage more than SGD$1 Million

So in order not violating the SPAM law, the email/SMS/MMS should:

1. for email, the subject must started with “<ADV>”
2. Must have unsubscribe facility

Hopefully this article helps, If you are going to send any commercial (please refer to the document, the description is quite long) message, please make sure you are not violating the law.

PS: Hmm… although it sounds like I’m advocating the spammers, I’m not. I hate spammers.

I was going to write about the upcoming Spam Control Bill which will be enforced effective on June 2007. But when I went to http://parliament.gov.sg, it’s a dead end (>.<).So my request is, please modify the .htaccess file to redirect http://parliament.gov.sg to http://www.parliament.gov.sg

Or, since according to netcraft it runs on Apache, please use mod_rewrite module.

Copied from AsiaOne.com:

The city-state will spend up to 1.5 billion Singapore dollars (US$989 million; €727 million) on the system which is intended to standardize training, software and maintenance, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore said in a statement Thursday.

Personal computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Co. and electronics maker NEC Corp. are leading two of the four groups expected to submit proposals for the project by its June 7 deadline, The Straits Times newspaper said. The contract will be awarded by Oct. 10, it said.

So where does that leaves the SME (Small and Medium Enterprises)? Does they have the chance to participate in the tender? Unfortunately, in order to participate in the tender, a company must have a certain amount of capital. So this is one the possible barrier for a company to participate in the tender.

So where are the tender? And what is the minimum capital required for a company to participate? Unfortunately I can’t list them here, too many of them. Check out Gebiz for the details.