The telco turns off almost 200,000 SIMs as new registration regulations come into force
Telecom Namibia (TN) announced the deactivation of 191,598 unregistered prepaid SIM cards to align with the recently implemented SIM card registration regulations mandated by the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN).
As of 31 March 2024, TN’s records indicated a total of 442,410 active mobile subscribers. Following the deactivation, TN said it will maintain a base of 250,812 registered prepaid subscribers. Customers with deactivated SIM cards can regain service by completing the registration process. TN is encouraging affected users to visit any Teleshop to register their SIM cards.
Speaking to the Namibian newspaper, the telco expects a loss of between N$6,3-$8,6 million (€311,500 – 425,200) per month due to the deregistration. TN chief executive Stanley Shanapinda told Desert Radio these figures are the telco’s biggest concern as it monitors the reactivation process. Huge numbers of customers have reportedly been queuing outside of teleshops over the past couple of days as a result of the deactivation.
Shanapinda said TN partnered with post offices in areas where they did not have a presence, to enable customers to register their SIM cards. The telco had hoped to get to 90% registrations but the logistical challenge of doing so in such a vast lightly populated country proved too difficult.
The telco has now drafted in interns and extended its operating hours to try to deal with the surge of registrations. This compounds the revenue shortfall as it increases the telco’s costs.
On 1 April, TN implemented what it called “a comprehensive deactivation procedure” to suspend unregistered prepaid SIM cards. This process involved transitioning these cards to a “two-way block” status, effectively preventing them from initiating or receiving calls, texts or data services.
The deactivated SIM cards can only be reactivated by completing the established SIM registration process. This ensures that only registered users can access TN’s services: “thereby strengthening regulatory compliance and data security measures,” according to the operator.
According to the regulator CRAN, the campaign to identify Namibian telecom subscribers was launched on 1 January 2023 and was expected to end on 31 December of the same year. As of 27 December, 62.5% of SIM cards were registered. The government decided to push back the deadline to allow people to comply. Despite this, the registration rate was 70.6% as of 29 February across all operators. On that date, the regulator said 1,687,742 SIMs were registered out of a possible 2,387,230.