The National Communications Authority (NCA) has in response to numerous calls from a section of consumers, extended the registration of mobile SIM cards for a period of three months (90 days).
The Director General of the NCA, Paarock Vanpercy, told a news conference that the period will be used to mop up all unregistered users.
It will also work with the service providers and the relevant authorities to weed out the use of fake ID cards used by some persons to register.
�All registrations made would be verified. We have seen a significant in the quality of registrations. As at now, out of the returns of in excess of 17 million that we got, 10.3million of those were validly registered, and something close to about 5million invalidly registered. Coming close to the end of this exercise which was Thursday, it then creates a huge challenge as to how we get people who didn�t register properly to do the right thing. This problem is further aggravated by the fact that because of the slowness in the verification process, there is also a little over 2million subscribers out there whose details have not been verified. Putting this two together, takes us something within the region of 6 or 7million subscribers whose registration either needs to be verified or redone afresh for invalid registration� he explained.
�This 90-day period would be reviewed at the end of it to see what progress we�ve made. So for now, there will be no deactivation of sim cards. That situation will be reviewed at the end of the 90-days and a decision will be taken collectively with the operators. Apart from the Electoral Commission which has a complete database, which makes verification easy, others have manual operations. This includes the passport office which has now changed to a biometric system as well as those who use Driver�s license where some of the verification has to be done even at Regional levels. This means that we have to go all out and verify all of these� he noted.
The Mobile Number Portability (NMP) system which allows mobile phone subscribers to switch service providers while retaining their number, has also been pushed to July 7 from an initial July 1 start date.
The decision was taken after a meeting with the Chief Executives Officers of all the telecom companies operating in the country.
The Authority had vowed not to extend the date after giving users close to a year to register. But some consumers and Civil Society groups, notably, think tank Imani Ghana warned that thousands of mobile phone users would be negatively affected by the deactivation of their SIMs on July 1, 2011 because they had not registered. They also challenged the legal basis for the NCA's threatened deactivation of SIM cards without the approval of their owners.
Some mobile phone users had also threatened to sue the Authority if it disconnected them on June 30, when the deadline for registration was to elapse.
The Ghana Telecoms Chamber, the umbrella body representing all all telecom companies operating in the country, also joined its voice to the call for an extension, to no avail until now. According to the chamber, the extension was needed to enable them correct anomalies identified with the process.
The NCA however stuck to its guns, threatened to sanction mobile operators who flouted the processes in the registration exercise, and insisted that all subscribers must register in person using valid national identification documents.
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