MAYNILA — Isinusulong ng mga mambabatas ang panukala na layong gawing mas madali para sa publiko ang pagpapadala ng mga mensahe sa iba't ibang instant messaging applications.

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Sa isinagawang pagdinig ng House Committee on Information and Communications Technology sa House Bill 6344 o Instant Messaging Applications Interoperability Act na iniakda ni Bataan Rep. Albert Garcia, hinihimok ang mga service providers na gawing posible ang pagpapadala ng mensahe sa pagitan ng iba't ibang 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," ayon kay Garcia.

Sa panukala, maaaring magpadala ng mensahe ang isang user na gumagamit ng isang instant messaging app patungo sa ibang application gamit pa rin ang nais na 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," paliwanag ni Garcia.

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Suportado ang panukala ng ilang ahensya ng pamahalaan.

"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," ayon kay Atty. Lucky Joy Domingo ng National Telecommunications Commission.

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"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," ayon naman kay Department of Communications and Information Technology Undersecretary David Almirol.

Ngunit ayon sa Instant Messaging App provider na Rakuten - Viber, hindi ganoong kadali ang interoperability sa pagitan ng iba't ibang application.

"Some of the challenges that might arise from this and the required collaboration between different services first of all is user identification. As you mentioned, you have given a good example of a Viber user trying to send a message to Facebook Messenger or to anyone else, so that means that Viber will now need to know all the Facebook Messenger users so we will be able to identify them and eventually send a message," paliwanag ni Peleg Bahar, Senior Director ng R&D ng Instant Messaging app na Rakuten - Viber.

"Today as you know, Viber is a very secure app with end-to-end encryption and other layers of security and now we will need to create a new layer working with other parties such as Facebook Messenger or anyone else. Next one is data sharing so for example, once we send a message, we show the user when it was delivered, when it was seen by the other parties, this is some of the data that we need to exchange now between the parties to continue to provide the services we currently give to our users. We wouldn't want this app to diminish the current user experience in Viber," dagdag ni Bahar.

Nilinaw naman ni Garcia na hindi agaran ang pagpapatupad ng interoperability ng mga instant messaging app. Sinang-ayunan ito ng DICT.

"There are technicalities that we need to prepare first specially on the interoperability measures, security, data privacy, etc., but it can be done in the gradual manner, it cannot be done in a quick manner specially if you try to look at it, right now there's already integrations. In fact, you can transfer one file to another but not messages. You can even transfer an image coming from messenger, the you can transfer that to Whatsapp, Viber, currently that can be done already but that's just image forwarding approach but not messaging," ani Almirol.