Govt to block illegal SIMs after Feb 26

ISLAMABAD: The government is all set to block unverified ‘suspicious’ SIMs after the expiry of the first deadline next week (February 26, 2015). So far 54 millions SIMs have been verified through the Biometric Verification System (BVS) out of 103 million across the country.
The cellular operators are asking the government to extend the deadline of the first phase in order to avoid the blockage of millions of unverified SIMs.The Ministry of Information Technology is proposing to extend the deadline of the first phase by a period of two weeksbut the final decision in this regard will be taken by Minister for Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.
The Interior Ministry has given deadline in two phases to verify all SIMs under which the grey SIMs having three or more were issued on CNICs. In Pakistan, usually the male family members got more SIMs on their names as females were reluctant to get SIMs registered on their own names.
So far 7 million SIMs were blocked through BVS process where the users disowned numbers on their names.“Ministry of Interior has given direction to accomplish this process in two phases till April 13, 2015 and the second phase will commence from Feb 27,” top officials of PTA confided to The News here on Thursday.
Now the PTA will determine how much SIMs will be allowed on CNIC after expiry of the first phase. “We may allow three SIMs on per Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) and any further unverified SIMs will be blocked with immediate effect,” said the sources.
When contacted, top official of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said that the Ministry of Interior had given a deadline of April 13, 2015 to complete verification of 103 million SIMs through BVS but the PTA devised its policy to accomplish the process in two phases under which the grey SIMs would be verified in the first phase going to complete by Feb 26, 2015.
“Now all those SIMs which will fall into the category of suspicious SIMs but were not verified, would be blocked after Feb 26, 2015,” said the official.Now in the second phase, the white SIMs, which were being used from the last two years would be verified. The PTA had termed such SIMs into category of white SIMs.
However, Umar Manzoor, director Corporate Communication Mobilink, told a select group of reporters that the cellular industry was going to spend Rs5 billion on BVS by putting in place thousands of devices, human resource and operational cost all over the country.
“So far we have verified 15 million SIMs by putting in place over 24,000 devices all over the country and numbers of devices were increasing on daily basis,” he said and added that they were committed to accomplishing the process within the envisaged deadline and no active SIMs would be blocked.
To another query about Pakistanis living abroad with SIMs on their names and using on roaming, he said that the cellular companies were working with PTA to define Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in this regard.He said that the retailers were charging Rs10 per verification of CNIC while the company was bearing Rs10 per verification fee for providing Nadra from its own pocket.