The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

A huge number of people are going to lose their mobile phone connections by the end of this month as the operators would be forced to disconnect their lines for their failure to register afresh.

The Government will not extend the deadline to re-register each active SIM card after May 31, though more than 30 lakh subscribers are yet to do it, due mainly to their lethargy, sources in the BTRC said.

Chairman of the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission Manzurul Alam on Thursday said that the re-registration deadline wouldn't be extended anymore.

A BTRC official told The New Nation that preservation of mobile subscribers data is urgent, as it is a security concern both for the state and the individual. "The government wants people to avail of the modern technology of communication not to allow anybody to abuse it," he added.

In August last year BTRC issued a notice to the operators to tell all subscribers to register their mobile accounts and provide proof of ID to the operators. The regulator ordered the operators to re-register customers who bought connections before February 28, 2006. The BTRC had to extend the deadline four times.

Starting from August 2007, following the regulator's directive, the mobile operators were able to re-register 70 percent or 70 lakh customers within nine months. On an average, 7.8 lakh customers had been re-registered per month.

The mobile operators are hopeful that they would be able to register the bulk of the remaining 30 lakh SIM accounts by the deadline.

The operators have started to offer incentives to lure their subscribers to re-register to avoid losses in business by losing a large number of subscribers.

Grameenphone, that leads the market with 1.80 crore subscribers, has already offered Tk 100 free talk time to a subscriber for re-registering by the deadline.

The market leader would suffer the biggest loss as it has majority of unaccounted SIM accounts. Some 27 lakh of the 30 lakh unaccounted SIM accounts are connected to Grameenphone, according to sources in BTRC.

Loss of the five other operators including Banglalink, Aktel, Warid, CityCell and Tele Talk will be relatively less as their subscriber base extended rapidly in the last one year and many of their subscribers need not to re-register their connection.

To register their SIM card - customers must produce two copies of passport size photo, passport or any photo ID card and the forms and documents.

If a retailer sells a SIM card without proof of ID they will face a fine of US$10 per infraction.

A subscriber will only be allowed to reconnect unregistered SIM cards under exceptional circumstances if they miss the deadline.

Bangladesh's total number of mobile users rose by nearly 58 percent in 2007 to 3.44 crore, according to the BTRC.

The six mobile phone operators added 45.30 lakh new subscribers in January-March, lifting the user base to 3.89 crore in one of Asia's fastest growing cellular markets.

Several market surveys have forecast the number of mobile phone users will be around 7 crore by the end of 2011.