Pakistan

PTA blocks thousands of unregistered SIMs

PTA has so far found 13.2 million SIMs rightly registered out of a hundred and five million.

Express May 18, 2011

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked as many as 875,000 mobile SIMs in connection with unverified mobile connections on Wednesday.

The authority has already blocked 16.2 million unregistered and unverified SIMs and mobile connections during Phase-I and Phase-II of SIM Information System-668, said a press release of PTA here on Wednesday.

After the completion of Phase-I and Phase-II only 16.78 million connections out of 105 million were left over to re-verify their antecedents.

During Phase-III of 668, a total of 13.28 million targeted mobile connections were approached and re-verified, it said.

PTA spokesperson Khurram Mehran said the authority has so far found 13.2 million SIMs rightly registered out of a hundred and five million.

He added that almost point 9 million users have not verified their registrations.

The verification process will continue for 4 weeks.

Telecom companies were instructed by the PTA to adopt all likely procedures to verify cellular connections of their customers - within a particular time period.

At the same time, the PTA directed telecom companies to block all unverified and unauthorised mobile connections by May 17, if subscribers did not get their SIMs registered on their computerized identity cards.

As mentioned in a previous report published in The Express Tribune, PTA Chairman Dr Muhammad Yaseen said all unregistered SIMs will be blocked by May 17 as the SIM data correction process goes into its final stage.

Yaseen said users have to send their CNIC number to 668 in order to get a reply with a list of all the SIMs registered on their names.

COMMENTS (1)

the sane one... | 13 years ago | Reply Thanks god that PTA at least moved in this direction, although i'm still not sure about the whole effectiveness of the process. The mobile companies are reluctant in blocking sims of user from they earn good revenue. The whole process of blocking is sim is more cumbersome than getting a new sim to activate. you have to go to thier center, fill a form, take original NIC, write an application, call back for confirmation etc. In a similar note if PTA can also enforce some rules to instruct companies to take sim holders permission before charging them with new packages automatically. Mobilink has started charging customers 10 rupees per day even if they download 1kb data in a day. All companies have revenue targets but the public should not be taken prisoner with these forced policies.

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