Tuesday, Jun 26, 2012
By Naushad K. Cherrayil
Staff Reporter
Dubai Mobile phone subscribers in the UAE need to register their SIM cards again as per the directive of the TRA’s “My Number, My Identity” campaign in bid to curb unauthorised or criminal usage of their cards.
The UAE has around 12.36 million active mobile subscribers as of March, of which 1.45 million are post-paid and 10.91 million are pre-paid subscribers while the country’s penetration rate stood at 154 per cent.
Etisalat’s customers can choose from over 100 points of sale across the UAE to process their mobile registration starting from July 17.
Subscribers of Du will also need to follow suit. Gulf News did not get any response from Du at the time of going to the press.
“The campaign aims primarily at providing the necessary protection to subscribers and enabling them to procure all services easily. Etisalat has fully harnessed its resources to complete this process successfully for its customers through its points of sale,” Saleh Abdullah Al Abdooli, Chief Executive Officer at Etisalat, said.
He said the campaign is particularly important for subscribers because it prevents “any unauthorised or criminal usage of SIM cards and helps in curbing legal or social violations besides reducing frauds that have been noticed during the few last years.”
To avoid queues and to accelerate the registration process, “We are planning to target different customer segment through different campaigns from time to time to ensure all customer are registered properly,” Etisalat said.
Mobile customers are required to update their profile in the operator’s database and ensure all SIM holders are the same as the registered owner of the SIM card.
“Subscriber verification is considered to be critical by many government agencies for national security. SIM card registration can help governments in curtailing crime by tracking and monitoring SIM card usage and mapping it to their registered users,” Bhanu Chaddha, senior research analyst (Telecommunications) at research firm IDC, told Gulf News.
Although, obligatory SIM registration is in place in the UAE, a large proportion of expatriate population and high multiple SIM usage “could result in a possibility that real SIM user and registered subscriber might not be the same. So, the regulator has initiated a process whereby mandating both operators in the country to revalidate their subscriber database,” Chaddha said.
Registration of the SIM card is only required once and all unregistered SIM cards will be cancelled once the registration period expires.
Customers will need to submit an application form along with valid identification document including Passport with valid residency, Emirates or GCC ID card.
For business and government customers, the requirement is a valid establishment card.
By Naushad K.?Cherrayil?Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
