Mozambique: INCM threatens to block unregistered SIM cards

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Mozambique: INCM threatens to block unregistered SIM cards

4:31 CAT | 29 Oct 2020

in file CoM

The National Institute of Communications of Mozambique (INCM), the regulatory body for telecommunications, has threatened to block any mobile phone sim card that is not registered by 6 November.

Such threats have become a regular occurrence. The Mozambican government first demanded sim card registration in the wake of riots over price rises in September in 2010. It was claimed that mobile phones were extensively used to mobilise rioters in Maputo.

Registering the sim cards, so the argument went, would make it possible to find out who was sending inflammatory text messages. The use of phones for criminal purposes (such as demanding ransoms for business people who had been kidnapped) could be curbed if the phone numbers used could be traced back to the criminals.

The mobile phone companies pointed out that registering all the sim cards was an enormous task and successfully lobbied the government to extend a deadline initially regarded as unrealistic. Then, as the riots faded from memory, registration seemed less urgent and dropped off the agenda.

But when Carlos Mesquita became Minister of Transport and Communications in January 2015, he revised the demand for registration. In February 2015, he gave the three companies a month to complete the registration.

That deadline also proved unrealistic, but this time the matter would not go away. The government issued a decree on the matter, and threatened companies which failed to register their clients with fines of up to six million meticais (about 126,000 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time).

The final deadline for registering the sim cards was 1 December 2016. The three mobile phone companies (M-cel, Vodacom and Movitel) said they had blocked no less than 5.7 million unregistered cards.

Yet once more the INCM is claiming that unregistered cards are in use. This should not be possible since it is a legal obligation on the companies to register the sim cards they sell to consumers.

The INCM warns that anyone with an unregistered sim card, or one that had been irregularly registered, will lose access to all voice and data services as from 6 November.

The INCM statement added that it is developing platforms for receiving and dealing with complaints about fraud, defamation and other crimes committed with the use of mobile phones.

Source: AIM