The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has launched a drive to check the sales of pre-activated SIM cards of the mobile phone companies operating in the country, said officials. The sales of pre-activated subscriber identification module cards are rampant as retailers in collusion with the mobile operators selling such SIM cards, violating BTRC rule, they said.
A BTRC team this week has carried out inspections at the head offices of Grameenphone, Banglalink and Robi as part of the drive and will inspect those of Citycell, Airtel and state-run Teletalk next week, they said.
‘The drive is intended to see whether or not the mobile phone companies are following different directives on subscriber identification module cards, focusing on pre-activated SIM card sales,’ a senior BTRC official told New Age on Wednesday.
He said the main objective of the drive was to understand how the mobile phone operators were allowing pre-activated SIM card sales in the market violating the BTRC rule.
‘The telcos always blame the retailers and distributors for the wrongdoing. But, as a matter of fact they are also responsible for the rampant sales of pre-activated SIM cards,’ he said.
Another BTRC official said the outcome of the drive would also help the telecom regulator to formulate an integrated policy for curbing the sales of pre-activated SIM cards.
The High Court on Tuesday directed the mobile operators and the government agencies concerned to deactivate immediately the unregistered SIM cards issued or sold through dealers.
The HC bench of Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar issued a rule asking the government and the chief executive officers of the six mobile operators to explain in four weeks why they would not be directed to take effective measures to stop issuing or selling unregistered SIM cards.
BTRC officials, however, said there was no unregistered SIM cards in the market as the mobile phone companies in collusion with retailers prepared fake documents for each SIM card.
‘Retailers do the job with fake national identity cards and the mobile phone companies knowingly ignore such misdeed for higher sales,’ said a BTRC official.
As per a BTRC directive issued on September 2012, a mobile connection will be activated after the subscriber submits documents like copy of his/her national identity card and photograph to the retailer and the mobile operator concerned completes verification of the documents.
-With New Age input
