SIM re-registration gets a boost after court verdict

The process of SIM re-registration through biometric verification gained momentum after the court's verdict came in favour of the government move on April 12.

The number of re-registered SIMs already crossed 6.35 crore, while mobile operators said the number of active connections after the completion of the process would reach a maximum of 10 crore, which is currently more than 13 crore.

"We witnessed the real growth in SIM re-registration after the verdict. The process had slowed when a writ petition was filed in March questioning the legality of the biometric verification," said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

"Only the real users will remain in the market after the registration process and that will help boost the market," Mahmood added.

On Monday, State Minister for Telecom Tarana Halim said the number of active SIMs may decline by a few crores once the re-registration process is complete. "But it will not impact the market."

On April 12, the High Court cleared way for mobile operators to continue biometric registration of SIMs.

As of March, the six mobile phone operators had 13.08 crore active SIMs; of those, 48.55 percent completed re-registration within April 17 and users of some 1.06 crore SIMs failed to match their fingerprints with those in the national identity database, officials of the telecom regulator said.

The government made mandatory the biometric registration of all SIMs from December 16 last year and April 30 is the deadline to complete the process. Grameenphone is ahead of all operators in the biometric verification process, re-registering 57.47 percent of its total active SIMs.

As of March, the market leader had 5.62 crore active SIMs, 3.23 crore of which had completed the registration process. Second largest operator Banglalink got 54.85 percent of its 3.19 crore active SIMs re-registered.