NCA to release SIM re-registration timelines mid-March

From next month, the National Communication Authority (NCA) will come out with the timelines for the SIM card re-registration exercise.

This is in line with the Ministry’s directive that all mobile phone users in the country re-register their SIMs to avert de-activation.

Communication Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said the move will facilitate the monitoring and tracking of persons who use mobile phones for criminal activities.

The re-registration should have commenced in January this year but was delayed because the software that would facilitate the rollout is not ready.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful told Class91.3FM’s Benjamin Akakpo in an interview on Thursday, 20 February 2020 at the foyer of Parliament that: “So far, the NCA is working with its technical partners to set up a solution and by the middle of the March, they should come out with the timelines for its re-registration”.

“All manner of people are using SIM cards for criminal activities and because of the poor state of our SIM card registry, we do not know who is using this for what. And, so, for our collective security, we need to implement a more viable system of SIM registration – which we will do.”

“In addition to that, we will implement a device registration, which will also grow this industry in other ways making it possible for the telecom companies to have contracts, data plans tied to particular devices, which will drive smartphone usage across the country, it’s rather low and, so, makes it difficult to expand the many digital initiatives to majority of the population who are still using the ‘Yam’.

According to the December 2019 mobile phone subscription rate published by the National Communication Authority, there were more than 40 million mobile phones in Ghana.