Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked its first batch of 0.875 million unverified SIMs in its intelligent blocking campaign against unverified SIMs. A PTA official told Pakistan Today that the campaign was launched on May 18 to register SIMs against CNICs of the actual users.
He said the PTA had launched the SIM Information System–668 on October 15, 2009 to update its centralized database by the information provided by the users. “A total of 16.2 million unregistered/unverified SIMs/mobile connections were blocked under the phase-I and phase-II of the SIM Information System–668. After successful completion of Phase-I and Phase-II, only 16.78 million connections, of 105 million, are pending verification and have been marked as Target Mobile Connections for Phase-III,” he said.
During Phase-II, initiated on April 20, CMTOs and PTA started approaching the targeted users by sending multiple SMSs and launching awareness campaign via print and electronic media. A total of 13.28 million users re-verified their antecedents through 668 databases by May 17, he said. “During intelligent blocking a particular SIM/connection shall only be allowed to call 789 for re-verification of user’s antecedents. The 789 system is an automated real time verification system where a customer has to approach a Call Center of the concerned mobile company by dialing short code 789 and re-registering and verifying his antecedents through NADRA’s database by answering some mandatory secret questions,” he said.
In order to facilitate the consumers and considering the limited resources available with the mobile companies, the process of intelligent blocking shall be completed in four weeks where same number of mobile connections, 0.875 million, shall be blocked weekly, he said, adding that the connections that fail to approach 789, for re-verification/confirmation of their data shall be blocked permanently at the end of each week.
