Department Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy warned the public in a radio interview that there won’t be another extension for SIM card registration.
“Please register. You are already given 90 days more to register. This is the final extension because the law does not give us the authority to extend again,” he said in the interview.
SIM Card Registration
DICT opted to extend the registration period by 90 days which was included in the law. Prior to the extension, the National Telecommunications Commission mentioned that only 45% of the 168 million SIM card users were registered six days before the April 26 deadline.
In the last report from the agency, as of April 24, 2023, the registered SIMs bumped up to 52%. That was 87,442,982 SIMs out of the 168,016,400 active subscribers. Out of the total registered SIMs, Smart Communications led with 41,619,316 registered SIMs out of the total 66,304,761 SIMs or 62.77% of its subscribers.
However, Uy clarified, “Based on experience with other countries’ SIM registration, they expected 70 percent of the SIMs would be actively used. The rest were being used for scams or telemarketing. So, at 70 percent, we are looking at 100-110 million SIM card owners, and we are now at 82 million.”
The target of the department in the extension period is to have the remaining 20 million SIM card users register.
“We expect the remaining unregistered SIM owners to take advantage of the situation. The correct description of the targeted population is legitimate users and they are 100 million up,” he said.
Source: Gadget Pilipinas
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