ARTP deactivates five million unregistered SIMs

Senegal’s Authority of Regulation of Telecommunications and Posts (L’Autorite de Regulation des Telecommunications et des Postes, ARTP) has confirmed that around five million SIMs have been disabled for failing to comply with its revised deadline date to register, 19 November 2016. The head of ARTP, Abdou Karim Sall, said that the regulator could no longer tolerate unidentified SIM cards on the incumbents’ networks, having already given users six months to fall into line. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, in May this year Mr. Sall gave the country’s telecoms operators – Orange Senegal, Tigo Senegal and Sudatel Senegal (Expresso) – six months to complete a mandatory identification of all mobile telecoms subscribers. Starting 10 May, industry players had six months to comply he said, noting that to help ensure the success of the verification process for identifying users, all operators would be given access to government-held national identity files. Ten days after the expiry of the deadline, however, the ARTP official confirmed: ‘We have had to cancel over 2.9 million numbers for Sonatel, more than one million at Tigo and more than 1.73 million numbers for Espresso, making a total of over five million cancelled numbers which have been struck off.’ That being said, Mr. Sall added that customers can still have their locked SIM cards reactivated by going to their service provider and completing the necessary customer identification forms.