Mobile operator to decide on late SIM registration

ONE major mobile phone operator has yet to decide whether to penalise subscribers with fees if they want to register their SIM cards after Tuesday’s midnight deadline.
Responding to a query by The National yesterday on whether Digicel had set a fee to charge people for late registration, the company’s head of SIM registration Brian Malone said: “We have yet to decide.”
Bmobile-Vodafone on the other hand, said: “We will not be charging our customers a fee to register their SIM. We will provide as a free service to our customers for now.”
Earlier this week, National Information and Communications Technology Authority (Nicta) chief executive Charles Punaha had said that deadline for SIM card registrations had been further extended for people living in districts and remote areas of the country.
He said deadline for those in districts was December 31 and rural areas April next year.
The deadline for subscribers in urban centres or provincial capitals had lapsed and deactivation was to start yesterday.
Punaha said: “It’s been two years since we started SIM registration and again I must express our disappointment from both our operators and Nicta that we still have a lot of SIM cards that are not yet registered.
“For those SIM cards which will be deactivated, subscribers will have 30 days to come forward and get registered.
“Registering SIMs now, operators will charge fees because the free of charge only applied during the notice period. Operators will be charging their own fees if people want to register now.
In Port Moresby alone, only 58 per cent of the subscribers registered their SIM cards.