Seems the Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Authority was not kidding when they set the deadline for SIM card disconnection. A total of 485,867 mobile subscribers were disconnected at the stroke of midnight, Wednesday, for failure to register their SIM cards in an exercise that kicked off in February this year.
According to The Times the campaign which took almost half a year was done as a prerequisite to regional integration under the East Africa Communications Organization (EACO), aimed at curbing crimes committed through the use of cell phones.
At the time of disconnection almost 92.6% of the total mobile subscription base in the country had registered their SIM cards. This percentage represents a SIM count of about 6,110,138 SIMs.
There seems to be a ray at the end of the tunnel, for those with unregistered SIM cards, according to telecom service providers. The report further stipulates that the telecom companies are still in the process of registration. Pierre Kayitana, Tigo’s public relations and events manager, said the process had gone smoothly and commended the company’s clients for complying with the law.
From based on the stats we managed to get
- Togo received the highest ratio of SIM cards, registered, representing 96 per cent of its 1.9 million subscribers.
- Airtel saw 94 per cent of its 953,949 registered clients,
- MTN, received 90 per cent of 3.6 million SIM card registrations.
In usual African style, on the last day yesterday, mobile subscribers with unregistered SIM cards poured in large numbers at their service providers to avoid disconnections.
