The scourge of every e-mail users' inbox, spam, is gradually becoming a problem for their mobile handsets as well. So says a first of its kind study by the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland, Intrado subsidiary bmd wireless, and the International Telecommunication Union.

Mobile spam includes illegitimate advertising in the form of bulk e-mails, SMS messages, and sometimes even MMS messages.

The study of 1,659 consumers and 154 mobile service company professionals in Central Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia discovered that more than 8 in 10 mobile phone users have received spam already.

Both operators and consumers expect the problem will get worse before it gets better. In fact, 83 percent of telecommunications industry respondents either already perceive spam as a critical issue or say it will become one in the next year or two.

Consumers place the onus to solve the looming crisis squarely on the shoulders of mobile operators. If truth be told, most subscribers would rather chuck their mobile operator in the event of spam than their cell phone number.

For their part, a majority of carriers are well aware of the effects spam has on customers. However, they are presently in a trial-and-error phase, applying reactive measures and testing various technological alternatives for avoiding spam.

In other words, they're in the same boat as ISP's attempting to head off desktop spam before it reaches the consumer.

The GSM Association's government & regulatory affairs officer Tom Phillips comments, "Whilst there is no single solution to the mobile spam problem, there are a number of key components to any real solution, including identifying the spammers by rejecting anonymous or spoofed access and making them pay through clear and suitable charging mechanisms."

Canning Wireless Spam
The Mobile Marketing Association, a consortium of industries that stand to gain from mobile advertising and marketing, formed an Anti-Spam Committee last fall to head off the problem.

The goal of the committee is to help ensure the consumer's right to opt out, if they desire. Of course, it also wants to build a foundation for the long-term success of mobile advertising.

Its campaign began with an industry-wide Code of Conduct to provide guidelines for how companies market their products and services to consumers. The code addresses six areas of concern: choice, control, customization, consideration, constraint, and confidentiality

A couple before the Mobile Marketing Association's announcement, the Federal Communications Commission approved rules to prohibit marketers from sending unsolicited messages to wireless phones and other devices without the express consent of a consumer.

The opt-in rules implemented the wireless provisions of the Can Spam Act passed by Congress late in 2003. The exceptions to the rules include transactional messages between a company and a customer and situations where an individual chooses to forward messages to a cell phone.

Speaking of U.S. wireless subscribers, a new report by Technology think-tank The Diffusion Group finds the U.S. is slowly catching up to Europe and Asia with those regions heavy wireless penetrations.

The report says 61 percent of the U.S. population subscribed to a mobile telephone service last year. It also predicts that number will rise to 75 percent or 236 million consumers by 2010.

That’s a lot of mobile handsets for illegal and legal marketers and advertisers to target.