NCA to declare unregistered SIM cards illegal after July
The National Communications Authority (NCA) will declare all unregistered SIM cards illegal after July 2011 an official of the NCA has said.
Speaking exclusively to ghanabusinessnews.com in a telephone interview, the official said the telecoms regulator will have all unregistered SIM cards removed from the system by the mobile phone operators.
“Yes of course, unregistered SIM cards will be declared illegal”, the official answered when asked what happens to the unregistered ones.
The official indicated that all the telecoms companies have been directed by the NCA to remove these unregistered cards from their system and failure to do so will attract a penalty.
The official added that the NCA recently met to draft a penalty regime to sanction telecoms companies that fail to adhere to this directive.
Ghana started SIM card registrations from June 30, 2010.
All new mobile SIM cards would have to be registered in the name of the user or subscriber before they could be activated for use on any network, and all existing SIM cards already in use are required to be registered to remain active after the July deadline.
Another unnamed NCA official had told Adom News that the telecoms operators have reported between 75 per cent and 90 per cent registered SIM cards between June 2010 and now.
The source fell short of mentioning the specific numbers or percentages that each operator reported saying that the NCA was yet to verify the figures and come out with actual numbers of valid SIM cards registered by each operator.
The verification would involve cross-checking records of individual SIM card owners against the ID type they used in registering the SIM cards, the report said.
The registration which is an 18-month exercise is to wipe out all fraudulent SIM cards from the system.
Meanwhile, Mr Haruna Iddrissu, Ghana’s Communications Minister, has said the country loses $5 million from fraudulent telephone calls.
The registration Mr Iddrissu said on the floor of parliament June last year, was a common practice in the telecoms world and that it was mandatory in countries such as India, South Korea, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
Mr Haruna noted that in Ghana the requirement for the registration of SIM cards was provided for in section 8(2) of the Electronic Communications Act, 2008, Act 775, under the head notes Obligations of Operations of Electronic Communications Networks and Communications Services and Providers.
He said the Authority may authorise a network operator or service provider to disclose lists of its subscribers, including directory access database, for the publication of directories or for other purposes that the Authority may specify.
He said the rationale for the registration exercise as per section 8(2) and 68 of Act 775 was therefore to enable the operators to obtain a database of their subscribers.
The NCA deems such operational information necessary and or relevant to help eliminate the growing incidence of anonymous threats and insults emanating from phone calls made from mobile phones whose owners identity are unknown, he added.
Mr Haruna said the registration would therefore help to enhance security, adding that at the same time fraud, crime and threats perpetrated by unidentified callers would be curtailed through the SIM card registration.
In another development, the Newsday, a Zimbabwean publication reports that Zimbabwe’s three mobile phone companies at midnight on Tuesday began disconnecting tens of thousands of customers who failed to register their SIM cards by the country’s Monday deadline.
Industry regulator, Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz), announced this new requirement in June last year, the publication said.
The regulator issued the directive to register SIM cards last year with an initial registration deadline of August 31, 2010. It was however forced to extended the deadline to February 28, 2011 when many mobile subscribers failed to register their cards.
According to the report as of August 2010 only 3.8 million subscribers have registered their SIM cards out of the estimated of 6.5 million mobile phone users in Zimbabwe.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi & Ekow Quandzie