74 complaints on illegal SIM porting addressed in 4 months
ISLAMABAD: The authorities have resolved 74 complaints out of total 90 received on SIMs porting without permission of original owner from January to April-2014.Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), a regulator of telecom sector, took necessary action against each complaint, resolved 74 complaints and blocked illegal SIMs with restoration of original SIMs on original network. The action on remaining complaints is in hand where SIMs were illegally ported out from one network to another i.e. porting requests were initiated and implemented without the consent/knowledge of original owner of the SIM, official sources said on Sunday. The sources said these illegally ported SIMs were reportedly being used for fraudulent activities.
They said the whole process of mobile number porting from one network/operator to another is undertaken in light of provisions of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) Regulations & MNP Porting Process Guidelines.The sources said till date around 29 million successful ports have been completed. They said in order to curb incidents of illegal issuance of SIMs including fraudulent porting of SIMs, a new bio-metric system has already been installed by PTA at operators‘ network with involvement of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), whereby any new or duplicate SIM is issued pursuant to thumb impression of the original user only.
The system is functional since December 2013 and is now the standard procedure in major cities. It is expected that once subject bio-metric system is implemented across the country, incidents of fraudulent porting of SIMs will be illuminated/ minimized.Moreover, the sources said the whole porting process from one network/operator to another is overseen by Pakistan MNP Database (Guarantee) Limited which is acting as Centralized Clearing House for MNP process. State of the art equipment has been deployed at Pakistan MNP Database (PMD) and the entire process is fully automated.
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