Over 5 million SIM cards are blocked

ISLAMABAD — Cellular companies have blocked 5.06 million unregistered SIM cards, a sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Interior has been informed.
The committee had asked the companies to produce a record of all blocked SIM cards within 15 days, and has extended the May 22 deadline for blocking of all unregistered connections to June 30. The step was taken to restrict the use of mobile telephones for dubious and criminal or terrorist activities.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, committee chairman Talha Mehmood said that the cell phone companies had so far blocked 5.06 million unregistered connections, with Ufone had blocked the majority of unauthorised SIM cards, numbering 2.389 million. Mobilink has blocked 1.86 million, Warid 0.5 million, Telenor 0.110 million and Zong 0.195 million unregistered SIM cards. Mehmood said that the May 22 deadline given to cell phone companies to block all unregistered SIM cards had now been extended to June 30 keeping in view the cellular companies' good response.
The sub-committee had directed the cellular companies to block over 7.45 million unregistered SIM cards by May 22. It had also warned of a fine of Rs350 million to each company in case of failure to meet the deadline.
He said there were a total of 1,317 cellular franchises across the country out of which 30 had been shut down for issuing SIM cards without any registration.
“The committee has directed the cellular companies through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to re-open these franchises and re-validate their licences because there's already unemployment in our country,” he said.