In comparison to the nearly 235,000 people who had registered as of July 28th, two days before the extension was announced, just 5,861 people had finished the biometric capture for the re-registration exercise as of August 20, 2022, according to data from the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications.
On September 30, 2022, the current SIM registration process is expected to come to an end. People who don’t register will face penalties.
The National Communications Authority (NCA) has released some punitive actions that are to be meted out against unregistered SIM cards effective September 5, 2022.
NCA’s punitive actions against unregistered SIMs
- The National Communications Authority’s (NCA) document states that one of the initial disciplinary actions will involve rerouting outgoing calls so that special messages can be broadcast.
- Additionally, some numbers will be restricted from receiving special messages for 48 hours. A sequential batch of numbers will have their outgoing calls and data services stopped for 48 hours (2 days) once a week on a rotating basis.
- “Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) shall divide the Unregistered SIMS into five (5) batches for the purpose of implementing this punitive measure.
- “These measures shall exclude blocking of SMS to give defaulting subscribers the opportunity to initiate registration if they so wish.
- “Subscribers who fully register their SIM Cards within the period they have been blocked will only be unblocked by the MNOs after the 48 hours to avoid the MNOs tampering with their systems intermittently.”
Only after September 30 will the SIM card blocking in its entirety start.
On July 31, the window for re-registering SIM cards was extended; nevertheless, a month following the extension, the number of people who visited the offices of the network service providers to register their SIMs fell by 98%.
In comparison to the nearly 235,000 people who had registered as of July 28th, two days before the extension was announced, just 5,861 people had finished the biometric capture for the re-registration exercise as of August 20, 2022, according to data from the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications.