The National Telecommunications Office created a task force monitoring the SIM Card Registration Act amidst the technical difficulties experienced on its first day of implementation.
The National Telecommunications Office (NTC) announced that the agency would create a task force to monitor the implementation of the SIM card registration law after technical difficulties greeted early SIM registrants.
The SIM Card Registration Act required all SIM cards, new or old, to be registered by April 26, 2023, with a possible extension of another 120 days. Failure to comply with the law would result in subscribers being unable to make calls, send text messages, or conduct online transactions such as Gcash or Maya on their cell phones and other mobile gadgets as it would deactivate their SIM card.
With this, many subscribers overwhelm the country’s telcos causing their registration website to crash, Inquirer reported. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said that it would take two weeks to finetune the system.
People were annoyed by the glitches, some even registering at least seven times but a system error prevented the users from completing the registration. Most of them were workers wanting to finish the registration during the holidays as they would be busy with work in the coming days.
While telcos Globe and Smart acknowledged the technical problems and had their teams work on increasing capacity, NTC also decided to join in by creating a task force monitoring SIM card registration.
“May crineate na ang NTC na task force on monitoring nitong implementation nitong SIM registration. Mayroon po tayo niyan sa central office na task force team at secretariat. Sa mga regional offices din naa\min, nagtalaga din kami ng mga officials namin para sila ang maging coordinating focal persons po natin,” said NTC Deputy Commissioner Jon Paulo Salvahan in a radio interview.
For provinces that have weak signals, Salvahan said that an ad hoc (temporary) committee would be formed to tackle the issue. The ad hoc committee will assist provincial SIM card subscribers. Once the task is completed, the committee would be disbanded.
All subscribers are urged to complete their registration by April 26 to combat online scams, which have become more prevalent in recent years.
Tags: #NTC, #SIM, #Registration, #TechnicalDifficulties