All unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated at midnight of April 30th.
The final announcement was made today by Chief Executive Officer of National Information and Communication Technology Authority, Charles Punaha.
NICTA has directed all mobile phone network operators to deactivate all unregistered subscribers by the end of April 30.
The deactivation exercise will be conducted nationwide.
“D-Day is tomorrow, 30th of April. By law all mobile phone network operators are required to start the deactivation process at midnight,” announced Punaha.
All deactivated numbers will be completely scraped off and automatically recycled.
Punaha further explained that subscribers who wish to get new numbers will be required to purchase new SIM cards and register them at a cost set by the mobile phone network service operator.
Punaha reiterated that failure by the operators to deactivate unregistered SIM cards will result in a K50,000 penalty fee.
To this effect, enforcement officers from NICTA will commence audit and verification exercise next week.
“Our inspectors will visit each network operator, access their database to verify unregistered SIM cards and ensure they are deactivated,” said Punaha.
Punaha confirmed that Digicel has yet to register 1.4 million subscribers, Telikom PNG has 19,000 outstanding subscribers while bmobile-vodafone has a deficit of 58,000 users.
Subscribers are encouraged to check the status of their SIM cards though the short codes provided, for example, Digicel customers can dial *888#.