The Nigerian Communications Commission on Friday said unregistered subscribers would be cut off from telecommunications networks across the country.


Director of Public Affairs at NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, who confirmed this in a number of tweets on Friday, said this followed a meeting between the regulatory agency and telecommunications operators.

According to him, the deadline offers a window of opportunity to subscribers who have not registered their SIM cards to do so or be cut off at the expiration of the deadline.

He added that the total number of registered subscribers would be known after the cut off date.

Ojobo said, “The Nigerian Communications Commission has set a deadline for disconnection of all unregistered SIM cards.

“From the 30th of June 2013, all unregistered SIM cards will be barred from the telecom services.

“This decision was taken after a meeting between the commission and the service providers.

“There is now a window of opportunity for those who have not to do so. Otherwise from that 30th of June they will be barred and can’t use the numbers anymore to make calls.

“The total number of registered SIMs will be known after the cut off date.”

NCC had earlier said that no unregistered SIM would be able to migrate from one network to another in the Mobile Number Portability recently introduced by the regulatory agency in alliance with digital mobile operators.

Our correspondent had reported that about 19.16 million mobile telephone subscribers across the country may be disconnected from their respective networks next month following the exercise.

This is the number of subscribers that were not registered during the national Subscriber Identity Module card registration exercise that kicked off in the country on February 28, 2011.

Sources claim that the SIM card registration exercise recorded about 80 per cent success. This means that about 20 per cent of the nation’s active subscriber base was not registered by the time the first phase of the exercise ended.

As at the time the first phase exercise ended, the subscriber base stood at 95,886,714. Twenty per cent of this is 19,117,342 subscribers, who may be disconnected from the networks.

Although the active subscriber base has since increased to 109,829,223 as of December 31, 2012, new subscribers will not be affected because any of the additional 13.94 million subscribers must have registered before their SIM cards were activated.

Ojobo had in an earlier telephone interview with our correspondent declined to give an estimation of the number of SIM cards on the networks that were not registered, adding that the verification of registered SIM cards was still going on.
He had said, “Some of these SIM cards may belong to people that have multiple SIM cards. This is still an evolving market. A lot of things are going to play out. At the time of disconnection, you will know those that are genuine and those that are not genuine.

“If anybody is disconnected and the person comes to complain, you know that the person still needs the line. The person may not bother because he has other lines and will not bother because of number portability and does not need to register multiple lines.

“There are people that may not bother coming when their lines are disconnected because they have ulterior motives. So, a lot of things are going to play out. Disconnection will also throw up another verification process.”

The Executive Vice-Chairman at NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, had at a press conference in 2012, indicated that multiple registration would be weeded out during the process of verification.


http://www.nigerianeye.com/2013/05/unregistered-subscribers-to-be-cut-off.html?m=1

How will it improve the quality of services rendered

after cuting off the people that had not registered their number, are we going to have a proper network service? What are u people doing conscerning the poor network delivering in d country or is it all about registring numbers wen some1 cannot even had an easy communication. So many people had lost billions of contract, wives had lost there husbands, quarels in so many homes, fight between business partners etc all because of poor network delivering. Please u people should do something to upgrade network services. Let they network providers do something about it first before this registration issue