Mozambique: SIM card registration in January will involve facial recognition technology

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Mozambique: SIM card registration in January will involve facial recognition technology

8:37 CAT | 31 Oct 2023

Image: Minas

The National Communications Institute of Mozambique (INCM), regulatory authority for the postal and telecommunications sectors, intends by January 2024 to introduce new facial recognition and fingerprint technology, with a view to increasing levels of security for mobile phone subscribers.

According to the director of Communications and Statistics Services at INCM, Massingue Apala, the innovation will provide compliance with the new regulation approved this year by the government, which aims, among others, to reduce crime abetted by falsely registered telephone numbers.

According to the same source, the initiative comes at a time when the INCM is preparing to start the new registration of phone subscribers, to take place throughout Mozambican territory in the same period.

“We are going to have an innovation starting next year. Registration will now be done through facial recognition, as we have to know who is who,” Apala said in the city of Inhambane last Thursday (26-10) during a seminar to publicise the regulation of subscriber registration.

The measure, according to the same source, will include the introduction of the Single Telecommunications Number (NUTEL).

“We want subscribers to have a Unique Identification Number when they go to Movitel, Vodacom and Tmcel. We want subscribers to only have a single registration number, so that, by committing a crime via any of the operators, they can be promptly identified through their registration number,” he highlighted.

Apala said that mobile phone operators were aware of the new challenge, adding that the development was irreversible.

According to the INCM, Mozambique has around 16 million potential users of mobile telephone services.

Source: AIM