Challenges that await the govt about SIM card registration

Welcome to 2013. The year has kicked off on an interesting note. The government is threatening to heavily fine people using unregistered SIM cards. It further threatens to fine mobile telephone operators for allowing individuals to ride on their networks with unregistered SIM cards.

Interestingly, the general public has retorted back with scorn, saying that a government that is struggling to manage crime is now threatening to imprison mobile subscribers for simply failing to register their SIM cards.

So, what is exactly going on?

This story started when the government decided that it was time to tackle crimes being perpetrated through mobile phones.

There was a big furore after it was discovered that prisoners seemed to be more on vacation at the government’s behest, with mobile banking at their fingertips. Some were ‘earning’ more money than individuals outside prison.

In addition, ransoms for kidnapped people were being paid via the mobile phone. Blackmail, hate speech, death threats, name it, have been peddled through these gadgets.

The government is desperate to get ahead of the crime, and the result is that you could soon be fined for not registering the SIM card on your mobile phone.

The first question that government hasn’t answered is: If more than a million people have not registered their SIM cards, how feasible would it be to track and fine or jail these people?

This is a case of basic logic. You must identify the person who you want to arrest, and then you must have capacity to arrest such a big number. Not so easy where the police are outnumbered by about 1 to 600.

Compounded by the fact that there are many more dangerous criminals to deal with, the likelihood of millions being prosecuted or even going to jail is low.

So, where is the government going with this?

Compelling the mobile networks to drop unregistered SIM cards is a more practical reality.

There are four operators that are licensed by the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK). All the government needs to do is to order, as it has done, the operators to drop the unregistered SIM card users.

To switch off the unregistered SIM cards, all that mobile telephone operators have to do is to bar the SIM cards from being accepted by the network when the customer switches on their phone.

This effectively disables the phone from sending and receiving text messages and calls. It also stops the user from getting onto the Internet. (Read: Operators switch off 1m phone users)

The user will either have to replace the SIM card or register the current one if it isn’t too late, after which the network will lift the ban and services will resume normally.

The challenge is that Kenya has one successful mobile telephone operator, and three struggling ones that need every subscriber they have for them to keep their doors open every day.

For these operators, the requirement to switch off users who haven’t registered their SIM cards amounts to asking them to get rid of their bread and butter. It is for best interest that the mobile operators comply.

However, the reality that the government has not considered is that of counterfeit registrations. One could obtain a fake ID for the purpose.

Previously, owning two phones meant that someone could designate their different lives to different phones discretely with no paper trail haunting them. That is seemingly over.

In the clandestine world, this will definitely be frowned upon, so there will be attempts to get a line and register it in a different person’s name.

So, what happens next?

In theory, the government will make a lot of noise about it and possibly sacrifice a lamb for drama’s sake. The act will scare everyone with an unregistered line into putting their details on paper pronto.