Telcos seek time extension for biometric registration of SIMs

The mobile phone companies requested the government to extend the April 30 deadline for biometric re-registration of the SIMs as almost half of the connections were still unregistered with only three days left.
According to the regulator’s data on April 24, 7.33 crore SIMs were re-registered through biometric verification with the NID database of the total 13.08 crore SIMs.
Leading mobile phone company Grameenphone sought another two months time while Banglalink requested for one month time extension to complete the registration.
‘We have requested time extension until June 30 for the benefit of the customers,’ GP head of corporate affairs Mahmud Hossain told New Age when asked about the issue.
He said that until Tuesday GP’s total registered subscribers reached to 3.63 crore out of the total 5.62 crore.
A senior official of Banglalink said the operator thought that one month will be enough for completing re-registration of its 3.19 crore subscribers.
‘We are more than half way through with our re-registration process but will need another one month to complete the entire task,’ he said.
Another operator Robi completed re-registration of 1.20 crore subscribers of its 2.75 crore active connections as of April 24, showed regulator’s data.
Asked about the issue, post and telecommunication state-minister Tarana Halim told New Age that the government has no plan to extend the April 30 deadline.
‘I believe that the task will be completed within the deadline as there is huge enthusiasm among the users. We will stop the connection from May 1 for few hours but the users can also do the re-registration at that time,’ she said.
Meanwhile, the number of country’s active mobile phone users declined is last three months and the six operators lost 29 lakh subscribers because of the re-registration process.
In March the operators lost two lakh subscribers, in February nine lakh and in January they lost 18 lakh subscribers.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net