Cellphone users must register SIM cards or lose lines

All mobile phone subscribers will from next Monday be required to register their SIM cards with their operators in a process meant to build a data bank of users to curb crime.

Users have until July 31 to give their personal details such as ID number, date of birth and residential address or be blocked from using mobile phones.

“On Monday we are launching a media campaign, but those who will not have registered by the end of the deadline may be suspended from using the services until they do so,” said Information permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo.

Launch process

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), which will launch the process on Monday along with the four mobile operators— Safaricom, Zain, Telkom Kenya and Essar— says the exercise is meant to help curb rising abuse of mobile phones by carjackers and abductors, posing a great security threat.

Subscribers will be required to register through their operators who will store the information in a CCK data base.

Kenya has close to 20 million SIM card owners but only close to 10.5 million subscribers who are registered mobile money transfer users or post- paid subscribers have furnished their operators with their personal identification details.

Under the new rules, users will be required to give their postal and physical addresses, date of birth and alternative telephone numbers, besides their names and identity card numbers.

This means mobile phone subscribers, even those whose personal information such as name and identity number are with their operators, will have to update their profiles.

Kenya will be the second country in East Africa to implement this law.

Early this year, Tanzania set similar rules, citing security issues.

The implementation comes barely one year after the President directed the CCK to set up a data base within six months and start the process of SIM card registration.

But the exercise did not start within the stipulated time as the operators asked for time to consult on how to implement the directive.

Mobile phone use has witnessed phenomenal growth in East Africa, but criminals have hijacked the technology to defraud or extort money from subscribers.

The most common trick is to call subscribers informing them they have won fictitious competition prizes and that they should send money needed to process their cash rewards to the organisers through their mobile money transfer systems.