Globe, the country’s leading digital solutions platform is accelerating its SIM card registration nationwide to reach more people who have limited access to the internet.
The Ayala-led telco said it will roll out assistance desks in over 500 locations across the country to make it easier for customers to register their SIM cards.
Globe together with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) launched the National SIM Registration Week, which aims to reach out to customers, especially senior citizens, PWDs, pregnant women, users of basic phones and those with no internet access to get them compliant with the SIM Registration Act before the April 26, 2023 deadline.
“The National SIM Registration Week is a momentous initiative that will bring together Filipinos across the country to register their SIMs and move us closer to our goal of reducing spam and scam text messages, which is the intent of the SIM Registration Act,” Globe Consumer Mobile Business Head Darius Delgado said.
As of February 16, Globe’s SIM registration reached 13.62 million, out of the 86.7 million SIMs under its network.
NTC Commissioner Ella Blanca Lopez said that a total of 33.3 million subscribers across all public telecommunication entities have successfully registered their SIMs, representing 19.7 percent of the 168 million SIM subscribers as of September 2022.
“It is already the tail end of February and we only have ideally until April 26 2023 to generate as many successful SIM registration as possible. In the past three weeks the NTC central office and regional offices have worked with various local government agencies , Globe and other telcos in conducting SIM registration in remote areas,” Lopez said.
“As of today we have visited 103 areas all throughout the country,” she added.
DICT Undersecretary Anna Mae Lamentillo said the agency and telcos are working double time to ensure that more SIMs will be registered before the April 26 deadline.
“We are almost halfway into the implementation of the SIM registration, and we have observed a slowdown in the number of registrants. Although we anticipated this lull, we are compelled to do more,” Lamentillo said.
The SIM Registration Act requires the registration of all SIMs as a major measure against the proliferation of criminal activity, including smishing and other mobile phone and online scams that have spread due to the anonymity of unregistered SIMs.
