Over 3M SIMs enrolled on second day of mandatory registration
MANILA, Philippines — Some 3.3 million SIMs were enrolled on the second day of mandatory registration, the National Telecommunications Commission said Wednesday, as glitches that marred the first day of listing were addressed.
As of Wednesday, 6 p.m., 1,769,374 subscribers of Globe Telecom Inc. have registered, while 1,019,207 have registered with Smart Communications Inc. as of 4 p.m. and 530,424 have registered with DITO Telecommunity Corp. as of 3 p.m.
Users initially had a hard time registering their SIM, especially on the registration portals provided by the two largest telcos in the country — Globe and Smart — as they were either taken down to fix potential security issues or inaccessible due to heavy traffic.
Globe’s registration microsite went up Wednesday morning after a nearly full-day outage, while Smart said it has increased capacity to handle the volume of subscribers trying to register.
Still, the NTC has directed DITO, Globe and Smart to submit a daily written report for seven days beginning Wednesday on any incident of incomplete registration and other issues.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology had expected problems to occur during the first two weeks of SIM registration, which it said will be considered a “test registration” period where telcos are expected to finetune the enrollment process.
The SIM Registration Act was among the laws identified by President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. as his administration’s priorities and was swiftly and overwhelmingly approved by Congress, which is dominated by his allies.
The law is meant to curb crime and spam text messages, although ICT rights advocates have cast doubt whether it will actually work given the failure of similar measures in other countries.
A similar proposal was rejected by Marcos’ predecessor, former President Rodrigo Duterte, over concerns that the bill — which then contained a provision for the registration of social media accounts — over concerns that this will “give rise to a situation of dangerous state intrusion and surveillance.”
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