Unlisted phone users to pay heavy fines

Mobile phone subscribers will pay a fine of up to Sh300,000 or go to jail for three years for using unregistered Sim cards.

“Subscribers using unregistered lines are a threat to security because they are used for criminal activities. We are waiting for the laws to be gazetted so that we can start taking people to court,” said Information and Communications permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo in a joint press conference with the regulator on Wednesday.

In the new regulations set to be published in the Kenya Gazette on Friday, mobile phone operators will also pay a Sh300,000 penalty for the use of each of the more than six million unregistered lines in the market in new efforts aimed at curbing crimes perpetrated by the use of mobile phones.

Dr Ndemo said the regulations contained in the Miscellaneous Amendment Act on the Kenya Information and Communications Act had been handed over to the Attorney General for gazettement on Friday.

All the four local operators are required to suspend their services to all unregistered Sim cards whether used in phones, modems, iPads or tablets.

The registration is meant to stem the rise of crimes such as fraud, extortion, kidnappings and hate speech by allowing traceability of every transaction to a specific phone user.

“Both the operators and individual users of unregistered lines will have a case to answer in court. The operators will bear the intermediary liability because they become accomplices by failure to register the Sim card while individuals will be at fault for operating an unregistered Sim card,” said Communications Commission of Kenya director of consumer and public affairs Mutua Muthusi during the press conference.

The new laws require the subscriber to inform their service provider in case of any change in any of the identification details - official names, date of birth, physical address, postal address, identity card number - within 30 days.

Safaricom had registered 85.2 per cent of its customers by Friday, closely followed by Airtel which had registered 82.5 per cent of its subscribers.

Telkom Orange will be the most affected in the exercise as only 63.7 per cent of its 3.2 million subscribers had registered by Friday while YuMobile had registered 65 per cent of its subscribers.

None of the four mobile operators confirmed switching off their customers by the time of going to press.

Switched off subscribers have a grace period of 90 days during which they will have their lines reactivated if they register or else lose their lines completely, said CCK.