Regulator warns over failure to deactivate unlisted SIM cards

Telecom firms are yet to complete the switching off of unregistered SIM cards 90 days after the government-imposed deadline expired last year.
Data from the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) dated March 15 indicates there were 57,765 unregistered users still active on the mobile networks. Of the unregistered subscribers, 8,658 were on the Safaricom network while 49,107 were on the Orange network.

On the other hand, 3.348 million subscribers were ‘partially’ registered. The bulk of these users were on the yuMobile network.
In an interview last Friday, CCK officials revealed that they had written ‘stern’ letters to operators warning them about their failure to block unregistered users from using their networks.

“We wrote to all of them two weeks ago. We had hard facts that showed that they had not fully complied. I am yet to receive confirmation that all four have switched off all unregistered SIM cards,” said CCK director general Francis Wangusi.

The government set last December 31 as the deadline for the switching off of unregistered SIM cards as it sought to curb crime perpetrated by anonymous mobile phone subscribers.

A delay in the publication of the regulations guiding the process meant that the law could not be enforced until after February 11.
However, by Friday, 46 days after the law came into effect, Telkom Kenya was still sending out ultimatums to customers who had failed to register their SIM cards.

“Dear customer, your line is not registered. It will be disconnected within the next 24 hours,” wrote the mobile operator to a subscriber on Friday morning.

The line was still active 24 hours later on Saturday morning.
In a communication to the Sunday Nation, Telkom Kenya said that it had been implementing the switch-off in batches. Further, the company said that it was only sending these text messages to customers who had been overlooked due to technical challenges.

“We isolated and rectified a technical hitch in our system that had resulted in 49,107 lines being misidentified as registered. The result was that these subscribers were active unregistered on our network,” the company said.

Telkom Kenya said it had deactivated 791,000 users since January. Of these, only 15,000 had opted to register their SIM cards.

On the other hand, Safaricom and yuMobile denied having any unregistered SIM cards still operational on their networks. Airtel could not be reached for comment. Safaricom also said that it had not received any warning letters from CCK.

“We have no knowledge of any letter from the regulator asserting a contrary position, and if indeed there is one (which we are yet to receive), we are certain that it is a routine caution to all industry players and not in response to any specific incident of breach by Safaricom,” said the company’s corporate affairs director, Mr Nzioka Waita.

CCK’s acting director of licensing and compliance Christopher Kemei said the continued lag in the switching off of unregistered SIM card was partly due to the competing interests that telecoms find themselves balancing.

While as of December last year about 80 per cent of all SIM cards had been registered, there were a further six million yet to be deactivated. Had all these SIM cards been blocked off from the networks permanently, the market fundamentals in Kenya’s telecoms sector would have shifted significantly.

Telkom Kenya and YuMobile had the most to lose with estimates at the time indicating that unregistered SIM cards comprised 36.2 per cent and 27.2 per cent of their total subscribers respectively.

“There was a bit of laxity on the part of operators because of differing interests. They had not fully appreciated the gravity of the situation,” said Mr Kemei.