Archive for July 30th, 2008

Millions Of Unregistered SIMs Blocked

Published by Babar Bhatti on July 30, 2008 under Business, Mobile Companies, Mobile Phones, SIM, Strategy & Policy, Wireless

The flaws in original policy creation and implementation resulted in millions of unregistered SIMs. Now the shift in SIM registration policy is causing big headaches for consumers and contributing to the slowdown in mobile growth. My previous posts on this topic can be found here. It looks like the SIM blocking has been implemented for about 6 million SIMs.

According to this report from Business Recorder:

The initiative taken by Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior to curb unregistered Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs) Card culture has resulted in blockage of eight million unidentified connections, said Senator Talha Mehmood, Chairman of the committee, here on Friday.

He said that the CEOs (of all the mobile companies) had informed him that their business was adversely affected by the action taken by the committee. The CEO’s also handed over the CDs of 8 million unregistered SIMs for verification, he added. The CDs had been handed over to law enforcing agencies, he further said.

Out of these 8 million unregistered SIMs, 1.2 million had been reissued after proper verification and documentation. Whereas, 0.8 million blocked SIMs were given a dead line of July 25 for verifications, he added. He said that in order to find the culprits behind the distribution of unregistered SIMs, special teams raided across the country.

Talha said that the mobile companies were given a time frame till July 31 to complete their work in this respect. “Afterwards, from August 1, we will launch a crackdown against them,” he warned. He said that after completing this task the committee would take action against the dilapidated condition of jails in the country.

Image credit: Intouch