Zimbabwe - Mobile operators are now disconnecting unregistered customers on their networks, potentially large numbers involved

[new zimbabwe] ZIMBABWE’S three mobile phone companies at midnight began disconnecting customers who failed to register their sim cards by Monday’s deadline.

Industry regulator, the Postal and Telecommunications Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ), introduced the new requirement in June 2010, initially setting a deadline of August 31 of last year for networks to keep details of their users.

At the end of August, however, only 3,8 million subscribers had registered their sim cards out of about 6,5 million mobile phone users in the country.

No figures were immediately available of how many more subscribers had registered by Monday night, but the networks have been ordered to stop services to unregistered users.

POTRAZ says registering mobile phone users, a standard in many countries around the world, will help in the fight against crime, but some civil rights campaigners are registering hesitantly given a high level of mistrust of the government. Most people don’t trust the government with their personal details in fear of surveillance.

But POTRAZ says it wants to, among other things, “combat transmission of messages or making of telephone calls that are … grossly offensive, obscene or threatening in nature; spread falsehoods for the purposes of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to any other person … (and) making a series or combination of telephone calls without reasonable cause for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety.”

The mobile operators – Econet, Telecel and Net One – have used notices on radio, television and newspapers to raise awareness of the registration deadline.

Requiring mobile phone users to register has the potential to stall telecommunications' spectacular growth of recent years, according to the forecast group IHS Global Insight.

"The introduction of mandatory registration of SIM cards in at least 10 countries has resulted in a dramatic slowdown in subscriber growth and will see the disconnection of millions of unregistered subscribers," IHS Global Insight said in a recent report.

The requirement has already negatively impacted South Africa, which has led implementation of the policy and gave customers until end of last year, as MTN and Vodacom recorded drops in users by 6.4 and 5 percent respectively.

Drops are expected elsewhere as nine other nations, which include Kenya, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and account for about 80 percent of subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa, follow suit.

"As the registration deadline passes in each country, a significant one-off drop-off is expected as those unregistered SIM cards are deactivated," IHS said recently.

A similar move by Algeria in 2008 hit subscriber numbers. The second biggest operator Mobilis had nearly two million SIM cards de-activated and revenues fell to $140 million in fourth quarter 2008 from $173 million in 2007.

The United Nations has noted that the ease with which Africans can get mobile phone lines, which they can now buy on the streets - with no need for documentation - has helped swell official user numbers from just one million in 1996 to an estimated 350 million by the end of 2009.

Other countries requiring mobile phone users to register include Japan, Australia, Thailand and Germany. United States lawmakers last month unveiled a bill to identify pre-paid users to stop terrorists, drug dealers and gangs from using unknown numbers.

Mobile networks disconnect unregistered customers