Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III grilled the NTC during a budget hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 19, how it intends to prevent unscrupulous individuals from using fictitious information to register their SIM cards.
Sen. Mark Villar is batting for the passage of the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act or AFASA to fight the rising cases of online scams, while Sen. Grace Poe said authorities should test the mettle of the SIM Registration law by arresting and penalizing text scammers.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian made the call following a revelation made by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) that they have successfully registered with unnamed telecommunications operators' SIMs using the photograph of a smiling monkey.
As stipulated in the implementing rules and regulations of the SIM Registration Act, unregistered users still have five days -- from July 26 to 30 -- to catch up and save their SIM from permanent deactivation. Their incoming SMS is still left active so they could receive a one-time PIN for SIM registration.
The DICT stated on Wednesday, April 19, that it has received the request of the telcos to extend the SIM registration period but stressed that “at this point, there is no extension of SIM registration”.
Globe said it has done all awareness and educational campaigns for subscribers to sign up but came up with dismal results, primarily due to the lack of valid government IDs and challenged digital literacy.
SIM registration is helping drive Mobile Number Portability (MNP) among mobile users, as more people take the opportunity to move to the network they wish to register under their name under the SIM Registration Law, according to Telecommunications Connectivity Inc. (TCI).
Under its filtering protocol, Globe deactivates SIMs within its network once detected to have been involved in fraud. Meanwhile, SIMs outside of the Globe network are blacklisted to prevent them from sending to Globe.
