Over 100 Million Mobile Phone Users in Pakistan May Lose Connections

In Pakistan, more than 100 million pre-paid mobile phone users would lose their connections after the deadline of 28 days, which has given by Pakistan Government. All of the telecom companies are expressing their inability to do anything against restriction because Pakistani Government has set the deadline of 28 days for verification process. In deadline period, all the telecom companies will have to verify each and every subscriber with post-paid SIMs and then they have to block all of the pre-paid SIMs of same users.

After the brutal act and effect of terrorist attack, the Interior Ministry of Pakistan issued the short deadline to verify all pre-paid SIMs. As we all aware about the recent terrorist attack on an army school in Peshawar, which was held on 16th December, so just after one day Pakistani Government decided to set a restriction on pre-paid SIMs.

In terrorist attack, all terrorist was used to communicate through Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM) and it was from one of these five telecom operators. In all over Pakistan, currently there are more than 140 million pre-paid SIMs, out of which 10 percent are post-paid, according to Pakistani officials. As per recent reports, “All telecom operators want nearly six month (150-200) days of period for this huge operation of verification. They all are claiming that they will block all of pre-paid SIMs, when the deadline will complete. If the pre-paid SIMs, will get blocked for a month, so general public will suffer, and as well as telecom companies will bear the financial loss.

As we all know that it’s huge process, but its very short time for this detailed process”. According to telecom operators, it is difficult to verify more than 100 million pre-paid SIMs on urgent basis. According to officer of one of the leading mobile phone organizations, “They need some more time to complete whole process as soon as possible”. All the affected subscribers are now rushing towards the franchises, franchises and customer sales centers to get the post-paid SIMs.

The representatives of all five telecom companies; Zong, Warid, Ufone, Telenor and Mobilink will have to attend the meeting the meeting with Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan, Interior Minister; Ismail Shah, Chairman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and Minister of state for IT and Telecommunication, Anusha Rehman to thoroughly discuss and find out the solution to this problem. Now people are waiting for meeting to get the clear picture about this regulation.

Before one year, to stop illegal SIMs, PTA had introduced the unique biometric verification system for illegal SIMs analysis. All the cellular companies have installed this unique biometric verification system in all the franchises, retailers and customer sales centers, but still government is receiving a lot of complaints for the sales of illegal and unauthorized SIMs. But telecom companies are calming that after the unique introduction of the biometric system, the sale of unregistered and illegal SIMs has not been possible any more.