Friday, March 19, 2010

Zimbabwe Issues deadline on SIM Registration

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has issued the country’s three mobile network operators with an ultimatum to register the personal details of all pre-paid SIM card users by 10 August 2010.

State-backed newspaper The Herald quotes POTRAZ’s director-general Charles Sibanda as saying that the measures were being introduced for security reasons. He added that a penalty schedule would apply to companies that failed to meet the deadline. Econet Wireless Zimbabwe leads the market with approximately three million subscribers followed by Orascom Telecom-owned Telecel with around 650,000 customers and government-owned NetOne with no more than 500,000 subscribers. The vast majority of users are pre-paid.

In a separate announcement, POTRAZ has directed the three mobile operators to make per-second voice call billing available for all subscribers. Per-minute charging remains common in the country at present.

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