In what appears to be a step in the right direction, the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) will allow mobile phone users to register to a “not-to-text” database to prevent promotional messages from being sent to their phones via SMS.
NTC says that “the database is one way for us to minimize the SMS [text] barrage from content providers. Also, the content provider registry that we’ll be building would ensure that mobile phone operators will only deal with authorized content providers.” (Source: Inq7)
I hope they do this right by allowing the mobile phone owner to specify which merchant/content provider to block. Not just the number (which can change) and not an all-or-nothing filter (there may be some merchant/content which I am interested in).