The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), on Sunday, appealed to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to extend the nationwide deadline for SIM card registration which ended on June 30.

In a statement made available to Nigerian Telegraph, Gbenga Adebayo, the Chairman of ALTON, said that although the operators acknowledged the fact that the exercise had been ongoing for quite a while, subscribers had only just embraced the exercise properly in the last few weeks.
“We appreciate the effort of the commission on this process and the attendant public awareness campaign over the past few weeks. We believe that the exercise will be more successful if an extension of time is considered,’’ he said, asking for a 3-month extension.

Adebayo said that there was need to extend the deadline because of the general logistic problems that confronted subscribers, registration agents and ALTON members in meeting the June 30, 2013 deadline.

The SIM card registration exercise, which kicked off in March 2011, was originally scheduled to end in September of the same year, however, the deadline has been extended repeatedly by the NCC.

Tony Ojobo, the Public Affairs Director of NCC, recently said that the commission would bar all unregistered SIM cards from the networks of the telecoms service providers.