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Earful

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Why you can trust SCMP

In the old days, Hong Kong's brutal mobile wars were fought in the streets, with salespeople buttonholing passers-by and boasting of the huge amount of talk time their plans would give subscribers.

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Today, the fighting has gone underground: operators are using voice spam to lure customers away from rivals.

Earful has learned that customers of Hutchison Telecommunications have been receiving automated sales pitches from China Resources Peoples Telephone, using a technology known in the industry as interactive voice response (IVR).

Callers are first asked whether they would like to subscribe to a bargain plan.

Those who press the 'confirm' button on their handset are immediately connected to a telesales representative to complete the signing-up process.

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According to our sources, the voice spam is generated at random, so anyone with a mobile phone could receive such calls.

A Peoples Telephone representative would not verify whether the cold calls were a part of its latest sales strategy.

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