According to the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), a number of unregistered SIM cards are remaining active despite their service supposed to have been shut off during the registration period earlier this year.
The UCC has called on mobile phone providers to ensure that unregistered SIM cards are not functioning as normal and has urged the providers to crackdown on them and turn them off.
The UCC recently won a court case brought against it by activists led by the Uganda Human Rights Network for Journalists (HRNJ-Uganda) and the Legal Brains Trust, concerning SIM card registration.
The regulator told telecom companies to switch off all unregistered customers by September 1, but reports suggest this has not been completed as of Monday.
Orange, MTN, UTL, K2, Smile and Airtel/Warid said that they have switched off their unregistered customers. Unregistered mobile telephone holders subscribing to Airtel, MTN, Orange and UTL said they had not been affected in anyway.
By August 31, MTN indicated to UCC that “only 4 percent of its 7.7 million customer base had been switched off.” Airtel confirmed the switch off of all unregistered SIM Cards, but could not give exact figures. Orange-Uganda confirmed that 100,280 SIM cards had been switched off.
* Image via Shutterstock
Mohammed Awad
