PTA blocks 875,000 SIMs

Pakistan

PTA blocks 875,000 SIMs

Close

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked as many as 875,000 mobile SIMs.

18 May,2011 07:12 pm

According to spokesperson of PTA, the authority has already blocked 16.2 million unregistered and unverified SIMs during phase-I and Phase-II of SIM information system-668. After successful completion of phase-I and phase-II only 16.78 million connections out of 105 million were left to re-verified. During phase-III of 668, a total of 13.28 million targeted mobile connections were approached and re-verified.During the blocking a particular connection shall only be allowed to call 789 for re-verification. The 789 system is an automated real time verification system where a customer has to approach call centre of mobile company by dialing short code 789 and re-register and verify through NADRA’s database by answering mandatory secret questions to activate non-activated SIM.In order to facilitate the consumers and considering the limited resources available at mobile companies’ end, the process of blocking shall be completed in four weeks where 875,000 mobile connections shall be blocked on weekly basis thus bringing total number of SIMs to 3.5 million. The mobile connections that failed to approach 789, for re-verification of their data shall be completely blocked at the end of each week, it said.