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By Hlengiwe Ndlovu | 2018-04-03
BUYING a SIM card without paperwork will soon be a thing of the past as it will now become mandatory for all cellphone and users of electronic communication devices in Swaziland to register their gadgets with service providers.
The Swaziland Communications Commission (SCCOM) announced in a statement that it had completed its subscriber registration project, an initiative that will require all users of electronic communication devices to be registered.
The subscriber registration project, viewed as being reminiscent of local banks’ Know Your Customer initiative which requires account holders to furnish financial services providers with their PIN numbers, electricity and water bills as well as proof of residential addresses, will be officially launched by Prime Minister Dr. Barnabas Dlamini on Friday at Sibane Hotel.
SCCOM Chief Executive Officer Mvilawemphi Dlamini explained in a statement that this new obligation stems from provisions of the Swaziland Communications Commission subscriber registration regulations of 2016 which make it mandatory for operators to implement a process to record and store a Subscriber Integrated Service Digital Network number activated by the operator at the subscriber’s request.
initiated
SCCOM initiated this project in December last year by appointing a steering committee comprising representatives from Swazi MTN, Swazi Mobile, Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications (SPTC), police, ministry of home affairs, Financial Intelligence Unit and the Central Bank of Swaziland.
“The mandate of the committee was to establish a holistic approach to implement subscriber registration. This committee developed an implementation plan for the project and set out the requirements for registering subscribers as provided for in the regulations”.
implementation
The steering committee completed its implementation plan for this project and further set out requirements on how subscribers will be registered.
The SCCOM CEO said that the significance of the launch lies in its objective of sensitising the nation on the exercise and its significance to the electronic communications sector.
The issue of cellphone users being required to register recently surfaced to the public domain in SCCOM’s first annual ICT stakeholder conference held at the Royal Villas.
The commission’s CEO said in this conference: “We have been working behind the scenes for quite sometime now, but we will be launching the project shortly and everyone will be expected to register their SIM cards,” he said.
He said mobile operators who will fail to comply would be fined.
Swazi Mobile Chief Technical Officer Wandile Mntshali was quoted in this conference as outlining the importance of mobile customers knowing who their customers are as well as understandimg their expectations.
Mntshali said it was equally important for the country to align its policies with international standards.
“We need to use international standards as a yardstick for our performance”.
SIM card registration is not a new phenomenon in the world of telecommunications as it is done in different parts of the world.
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