Over 25 million unregistered SIMs about to be deactivated

Mobile-phone operators have begun the process of deactivating more than 25 million unregistered SIM cards.

The cut-off time for the re-registration of old SIMs was May 31 midnight.

Telecom regulator BTRC’s Secretary Md Sarwar Alam told bdnews24.com that the deactivation process had started as per prior announcement.

According the BTRC’s latest data, 104.9 million SIMs of a total of 132 million in the country have been biometrically registered within the deadline.

The breakdown of registered SIMs is:

Grameenphone – 49.01 million

Banglalink – 26.64 million

Robi – 21.00 million

Airtel – 7.68 million

Teletalk  – 1.27 million

Citicell – 0.14 million

# Deactivated unregistered SIMs can be reactivated within a total of 540 days through biometric verification.

# A subscriber will have to re-buy his or her deactivated SIM providing necessary identifications.

# If any user does not re-register a SIM within 450 days, an operator will be able to put it up for sale through notification. Then the user will have 90 days to re-purchase it through verification.

# After expiry of the total 540-day period, the operator will be able to sell off the SIM as a fresh connection to a new buyer.

# Registrations of SIMs using identity documents like passports, birth certificates or driving licenses instead of National ID cards will be valid for six months.

# New SIMs will have to be bought with biometric details since the system was made mandatory on Dec 16 last year.

The BTRC, however, could not say how many SIMs had been registered with biometric details until Tuesday midnight.

A top official told bdnews24.com that around 4 million SIMs were possibly re-registered by Tuesday, which would take the number of registered SIMs to over 107 million.

Mobile-phone operators earlier said it might take at least two days to deactivate the unregistered SIMs.

On Monday, a writ petition was also filed with the High Court seeking order to stop the deactivation of unregistered SIMs.

State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim said that the move was aimed at curbing crimes committed using fake mobile connections.