Mobile-phone users can text info for SIM re-registration until Nov 15

Subscribers who bought SIM cards before 2012 will be able to text their operators information necessary for re-registration untilNov 15.

The operators started sending SMS to their users seeking information from Oct 15.

“If the SIMs are not registered properly, they will be deactivated,” said the Posts and Telecommunications Division in a media statement on Tuesday.

It said if subscribers could present required valid documents afterwards, their deactivated SIMs would be taken under consideration for reactivation.

The division said SIMs could not be sold to anyone under 18 years of age and if they already had SIMs those would become invalid for registration.

Teenagers under 18 years would have to register the SIMs under any of their parents’ name, it added.

The statement said apart from re-registration, subscribers would be able to find out via SMS whether their SIMs, bought before 2012, were properly registered.

A subscriber will have to go to the phone’s SMS option and write his/her National Identity Card number, date of birth and then his/her full name and then send the message to 1600.

The information will have to be those found in the NID. This process is same for users of Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel and Teletalk.

Citycell users will have to write U first, then space followed by the NID number, date of birth and the full name in the SMS and then send it to 1600.

If the provided information is found correct, the operators will confirm through a reply. Subscribers will not be charged for the SMS.

However, those who would be rejected re-registration via SMS will have to use the newly introduced biometric system for re-registering their SIM.

All operators from Nov 1 will start registration or re-registration of SIMs through the new system at their customer care centres.

The biometric registration process will be in effect across the country from Dec 16, said the Posts and Telecommunications Division.

According to telecom regulators BTRC, more than 130 million of Bangladesh’s 160 million people had mobile phone SIMs until this year’s August and 52.5 million of them had internet connections.

The initiatives to verify subscribers’ information and SIM re-registration were taken recently after allegations that many of the SIMs were either registered under fake names or unregistered.

Criminals had also been reportedly using many of these SIMs.

After the process to crosscheck subscribers’ information with the National Identity Registration Wing’s server started, it was found that around 75 percent of the 10 million SIM cards verified until now were ‘not registered properly’.

Only 2.34 million SIMs were registered properly, according to government data.