Senate Bill No. 2644: SIM Card Registration

Introduced by Sen. Manny Villar, the Senate Bill No. 2644 (or Prepaid SIM Card Registration) is “an act of requiring the registration of the buyers of prepaid SIM cards, and providing penalties for the violation thereof”.

Filed in January 20, 2011, the bill seeks to address some “text messaging related scams” and other crimes that involve the use of disposable prepaid SIM cards.

Inquirer.net reports that the Department of Justice has endorsed this bill as well:

Villar, in his proposed SB No. 2644 said that prepaid SIM cards are used by criminals in committing money-making activities such as e-raffle and random lottery.

Prepaid SIM cards, he added, have also become a tool of the so-called â€œdugong-dugongâ€ gang to commit robbery or extort money from their victims.

The bill proposes that all sellers of prepaid SIM cards will require buyers to present government issued identification cards and record all personal information of the buyer.

The bill proposes a penalty of a fine ranging from P100,000 to P1 million and imprisonment from one year to two years for all violators.

Already wrote my piece about SIM card registration here before.

This is not new since telcos are already doing SIM card registration to all postpaid users — over 2 million subscribers are required to register their name and address when getting a postpaid SIM card. This process is just being duplicated to all non-postpaid (prepaid) users.

I’m sure the all postpaid subscribers would agree that this is a secure process — otherwise, I don’t think they’ll remain in postpaid and have their name registered anyways.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

64 Comments

Bryan says:

14 years ago

how about the current prepaid users?
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Operation Super says:

14 years ago

My name is already attached to my number when I upgraded my SIM.

But the scenario of making existing subscribers to register would be interesting. Maybe telcos could disable your number until you registered it.

Still, I am all for it.
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Erin says:

14 years ago

I am a prepaid user and I have registered my number with Smart. It allows me the benefit of retaining the same number if for some reason it gets lost or damaged.

ciao!
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raul barrios says:

14 years ago

@Erin really? I didn’t know about that. Nice info, now I can retain my phone number. I’ll just have to register first. Thanks!
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Ed says:

14 years ago

while i totally agree with the purpose of registering, i would assume administering it would be more difficult than most people think. giving your IDs and info to a Globe/Smart Business Center (a trustworthy place for this type of transaction) is definitely not the same as giving your info to a corner store where you picked up a prepaid SIM. so i am curious as to how they would go about doing this. maybe e-registration through a website on your own time to activate the sim?
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RJCA says:

14 years ago

Largely impractical.
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bagito_pa says:

14 years ago

Ganyan din sa saudi dati…. sinasabi ng telecom na puputulin nila service kapag hindi nag register pero hindi nila magawa dahil mababawasan sila ng subscriber…. implemented lang sa mga bagong kukuha ng sim…..
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jojo says:

14 years ago

ganyan din dito sa brunei, kahit sa mga corner stores, pino-photocopy nila ang either passport or Identification card(IC) mo pagbumili ka ng SIM tapos sina-submit nila yan sa telco…kaya parang ala pa akong nabasang text-scam dito…
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Benchmark33 says:

14 years ago

Really Erin? Well sa Globe, I know I registered my sim to them but I am not sure if I have the same perks na I could ask for a replacement sim if I lost it…lalo na my number is somewhat VANITY. hehehehe then again, 10 years na kasi yung sim kong yun sa akin, kaya ingat na ingat ako…hehehehe
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Melvin says:

14 years ago

I’m a globe prepaid user i lost my phone with my sim last november they replaced my sim with same number without charge :D
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