Senegal’s telecoms regulator Autorite de Regulation des Telecoms et des Postes (ARTP) has given the country’s three mobile operators, Orange Senegal, Tigo Senegal and Sudatel Senegal (Expresso), a 60-day extension on the deadline for ensuring that all their customers have provided the necessary personal identification information under the watchdog’s mandatory SIM registration programme. Under Decree No. 2007-937, all users are required to comply with new rules confirming their identity, but the ARTP has extended the deadline from 1 October 2015 to 1 December 2015 allow the last of the ‘offenders’ to comply before switching off their service.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, in June 2013 the Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications and Digital Economy launched a scheme to identify all mobile subscribers in the country. The project, managed by the ARTP, is being carried out under recommendations laid out by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – adopted in 2007 – that require domestic cellcos to identify who is using their mobile services in order to provide more reliable statistics on the market, improve security and tackle the grey market for phones. Eight years after adopting the decree, Senegal’s wireless service providers have so far failed to complete the mobile identification scheme, despite the trio deploying teams across the country to help complete the process.