SIM re-registration: New deadline May 31

The government has extended the deadline for biometric SIM re-registration by a month after a third of the mobile phone subscribers could not complete the process within the given time that ended yesterday.

The re-registration process would continue until May 31 midnight, Tarana Halim, state minister for posts and telecommunications, announced at a press conference at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) office in the capital yesterday evening.

The deadline has been extended considering public sufferings following high traffic on the national identity database (NID) server, which had slowed down the process.

The SIMs which were not re-registered until yesterday would remain deactivated for three hours anytime in the next one month, she said and termed the move a 'warning' to their owners.

Tarana warned of deactivating all unregistered SIMs permanently after the new deadline. No one would be able to sell the SIMs for the next 15 months, she said.

A total of 8.9 crore SIMs were re-registered until yesterday noon, according to the state minister.

She also said the fingerprints of more than 1.2 crore mobile phone users did not match with those on the NID server.

The SIMs, however, would not be blocked for now as “their owners tried to comply with the government instruction”.

But, they would have to go to the Election Commission, make the corrections and complete the re-registration within the next month, she said.

Earlier yesterday, Tarana said the NID server slowed down due to high data traffic as a huge number of people rushed to complete the re-registrations at the last moment.

“Mobile phone operators and the NID authorities did not expect such a pressure [on the server],” she said at a programme organised by the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh at the Krishibid Institute in the capital.

The state minister also said SIMs owned by people with disabilities would not be deactivated after the deadline of April 30.

The number of such SIMs is nearly 16 lakh, according to mobile operators.

The operators would ensure that the people with disabilities are attended on a priority basis on every Saturday, said Tarana.

As many as 3.97 crore of 5.62 crore active Grameenphone SIMs and 2.4 crore of 3.19 crore active Banglalink SIMs were re-registered as of Friday, according to the operators.

Robi and Airtel have 1.57 crore and 48.69 lakh SIMs re-registered so far. The operators have 2.75 crore and 1.02 crore active SIM users.

Around 10 lakh of the 42.5 lakh users of state-owned Teletalk have completed the re-registration while one lakh of total 7.99 lakh Citycell SIMs subscribers have finished the process.

The operators said they had been facing serious problems in getting connected to the NID server and verifying users' fingerprints since Thursday evening.

They blamed a huge last-minute rush of mobile phone subscribers for failing to complete the re-registration of around 13.09 crore active SIMs by now.

The NID server should take half a second to match a fingerprint with the one on the server. However, yesterday and on Friday, it took around 30 seconds on an average, a senior executive of an operator said.

“…as we need to take four fingerprints [for each SIM], it took at least two minutes for completing the re-registration of a single subscriber,” said the official, wishing not to be named.

Last week, three mobile operators -- Grameenphone, Banglalink and Robi -- had sought time extension for completing the process of SIM re-registration which had slowed down a little following the filing of a writ petition against it.

However, the process gained momentum after the High Court on April 12 cleared the way for mobile operators to end the re-registrations.