ISLAMABAD ( ABRAR MUSTAFA )
With more than 21 million SIMs left unregistered at the end of re verification process, telcos are about to lose a major chunk of their consumers. Mobilink will be blocking around 7 Million SIMs, Telenor 6 Million, Zong 4 Million, Ufone 3 Million and Warid 1.5 Million. As the deadline for re-verification ends 12th April, midnight, Pakistan will see one of the major steps of National Action Plan come to its conclusion.
According to latest reports, 16.690 million SIMs have been so far blocked by the telcos as their owners didn’t re-verify their SIMs within the deadlines. However with the final deadline for the re-verification to expire midnight, an extra 20.1 million SIMS will be blocked by the telcos.
The government has already stated that there will be no more extensions in the plan. In light of this, PTA, Pakistan’s foremost regulation body of the telecom sector has directed telcos to submit their undertaking on the exact numbers of re-verification of SIMs through BVS and blocked SIMs in details on April 13.
While talking to TelecoAlert.com today, a senior officer in PTA categorically stated that all SIMs that were not re-verified within the deadline will be blocked on 12:00PM midnight. He added that so far the cellular companies have re-verified 77,167,225 SIMs through BVS on verified 60,496,307 Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs). So far, 16,690,774 SIMs had been blocked by all operators as subscribers disowned them.
He said that the government had given the task to re-verify a total of 103 million SIMs under the NAP and after counting the verified SIMs and blocked SIMs so far, the number has touched 93 million SIMs. The remaining task is to re-verify the remaining The remaining task is to re-verify remaining 10 million SIMs in order to achieve the desired goal of 103 million SIMs but if the subscribers fail in doing so all unverified SIMs will be blocked with immediate effect after lapse of the deadline.
TelecoAlert.com according to its resources now believes that tomorrow around 21 million SIMs will be blocked. These SIMs represent those consumers that were regular customers. This means that around 37 million SIMs in total will be blocked at the end of this process. This will cause considerable shift in the telecom sector in terms of ranking and revenue.