PTA plans transfer with computerised NICs by June

KARACHI - Some 4 million SIMs registered on old National Identity Cards are to be transferred on the computerised NICs from June this year. The Nation has learnt that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has planned to transfer some 4 million SIMs which are registered on non-computerised ID cards from June this year, while the authority has started devising a procedure for that. 'A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is in making by the authority and as soon as they finalised it all the existing SIMs registered on non-computerised ID cards would be transferred on computerised ID cards, sources said. The mobile operators would be asked by PTA to facilitate the customer and transfer their SIMs registration on the computerised ID card, but the authority itself is not going to establish any sort of facilitation centre for that purpose, sources added. Chairman PTA Dr Yaseen has earlier stated this while talking to the media in Karachi at Mobile Banking Conference that this step is in actual the second phase of PTAs 668 SIM Information Service. This is to make the SIM information system transparent and help identifying even those SIMs that have been registered on old ID cards, sources maintained. It is pertinent to mention that PTAs 668 SIM Information System, a service that can tell number of SIMs issued against any CNIC through SMS or 668 website, has served around 16m requests so far. Moreover, since the officially launching of the service on October 15th, 2009, total 11m SMS requests and 5m web requests, have been entertained by 668. According to the details a total of 0.90m complaints were lodged in response to 668 information system, which reported total of 2.38 million irregular connections. And out of 2.38 million SIMs, total 0.90 SIMs have been regularized, another 0.5m were blocked and around 0.92m SIMs are pending regularisation.