DUMAGUETE CITY, Negros Oriental, Feb. 27 (PIA) -- Officials from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC7) and telecommunications companies here are in favor of incentivizing the SIM card registration to encourage more people to comply with the directive of the country’s SIM Card Registration Act.

This comes as NTC7 noted a low turnout of people registering their SIM cards for this month.

“We anticipated this trend. Ang registration man gud along the way mo hinay gud na siya (Along the way, the registration will slow down). As the agency mandated to conduct SIM registration, there are many options that we like to ask or impose on telecommunication companies kung okay sa ilaha (if it’s okay with them). One is to incentivize to speed up the process,” said Atty. Alan Felix Macaraya Jr., the legal officer of NTC7.

He suggested that incentives could be in the form of three to six gigabytes’ worth of data allocation which will be given to successful SIM registrants.

The NTC7 official also urged telcos to intensify their awareness campaign to their subscribers so that they will be more informed about this directive and register before the given deadline which is on April 26, 2023.

As of this month, there are 35 million cellphone users who have registered their SIM cards with their respective telcos, but this is only 21% of the target SIM cards that should be registered.  

Macaraya emphasized that unregistered SIM cards will be automatically deactivated on April 27.

In response, representatives from two major telcos in the country cited some of their programs to entice their subscribers to register their SIM cards.

“We are now at 25% sa atong SIM registration. For successfully registered SIM card users, naa sila madawat na up to 3 gigabytes na data. The awareness campaign push pod ta sa socmed aron wide atong reach (We are now at 25% of our SIM card registration. For successfully registered SIM card users, they will receive up to three gigabytes of data. We also strengthened our awareness campaign in our social media to widen our reach),” said SMART Communications Representative Sam Gonzaga.

Gonzaga added that SMART Communications, in coordination with local government units and some agencies, have established SIM Card Registration booths in strategic sites so that people can come and register their SIM cards.

“I do agree it’s good to incentive SIM registration. Apart from that, we are actually doing mga LGU partnerships as well to push ang registration and another thing is to ensure hassle-free ang pag-register (We are also doing LGU partnerships to push for the registration and to ensure that registering SIM cards are hassle-free),” said Jascer Merced, the Business Development Lead for Globe Group.

Merced also stressed the need to reach out to people in far-flung areas since most of them use analog mobile phones which are not capable of accessing internet connection.

She sought the help of Public Information Officers (PIOs) in every city and municipality in the province in echoing this information especially to their constituents in the hinterlands.

The SIM Card Registration Act aims to protect cellphone users from scam texts, spam messages, and other fraudulent acts using cellphone numbers and also to prevent other wrongful actions to be committed in the future.

For prepaid Globe and Smart subscribers using smartphones, they may log in to new.globe.ph/simreg or https://simreg.smart.com.ph to register their SIM cards.

Globe postpaid subscribers are advised to wait for a text message asking them to proceed with the SIM registration while Smart postpaid subscribers can text YES and send to 5858 to register their SIM cards.

Successful SIM registrants will receive a notification text confirming their registration. (RAL/PIA7 Negros Oriental)