Ghana: telecom operators blocked more than 8 million unidentified SIM cards
December 9th 2022
More than a year after the launch of the telecom subscriber identification campaign, millions of Ghanaians have still not linked their SIM cards to their identity cards. Yet the government extended the deadline several times and threatened to deactivate non-compliant SIM cards.
Ursula Owusu-Ekulful, Ghana’s Minister of Communication and Digitization, said on Wednesday December 7 that more than 8 million unidentified SIM cards have been blocked by telecom operators since December 1. These are the punitive measures taken by the Ministry and the National Communications Authority (NCA) at the end of the deadline for the identification of mobile telephone subscribers.
Subscribers who have been blocked are those who have not completed both phases of their SIM card registration. They cannot therefore use voice, data, SMS, mobile money and emergency services before having finalized the identification of their SIM cards.
The SIM card registration campaign started on October 1, 2021 and was due to end on March 31, 2022. The deadline was extended to July 31, as a large majority of SIM cards had not yet been registered and a large part of the population had not yet obtained their national biometric identity card. As of July 28, only 16,590,350 SIM cards out of the 42,121,921 active in the country were linked to Ghana Cards. 25,260,661 SIM cards had passed the first stage of the registration process and 16,861,260 were not registered.
The government had to extend the deadline to September 30 and then to November 30. In the meantime, several measures have been taken to speed up the registration of SIM cards, including the introduction of an application allowing subscribers to register themselves. Likewise, penalties have been gradually introduced for those who have not yet registered, including a reminder message on every voice call and the cutting off of data services for 48 hours a week.
“ It is important that we do this, because without the security of our devices, we are all at risk. There are fraudsters and criminals who use the anonymity of the internet and social media to defraud others, and we need to make sure no one can hide behind that anonymity ,” Ms. Owusu-Ekulful said.
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