MTN Uganda's managing director Wim Vanhelleputte has told Parliament, the telecom will begin switching off unregistered simcards by 28th August, if indeed the 30th August deadline is confirmed.
At least 700,000 MTN subscribers have not yet registered their simcards, despite warnings from the Uganda Communications commission. MTN has a total of 9.5 million subscribers. Wim said that the 700,000 represented about 2.5 percent of its revenue.
The development came as telecom operators appeared before the parliament's committee on Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) asking for access to the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) Information system in order to ease verification of subscribers' Sim Cards.
The deadline for Sim Card verification using the National Identity card was extended from May 19 to August 30 in order to allow more time for telecoms to complete the verification exercise of subscribers who had not yet applied for or received their Identification details from NIRA.
The telecoms however say the verification process has been hampered by lack of an application programming interface that can update the subscriber information in real time.
The telecom operators including MTN, Airtel, Africell, K2 among others on Monday appeared before the committee chaired by the Tororo North MP Annet Nyakecho, which was directed last week by the Speaker Rebecca Kadaga to assess the progress of the sim card verification exercise.
MTN Uganda's managing director Wim Vanhelleputte raised a concern noting that it takes 3 to 5 working days to use the current manual system of verification where a subscriber's information is passed on to UCC which then remits it to NIRA for verification.
He said that it would be good if they can have real time access so that they know immediately that genuine NINs have been submitted.
MPs including Samia Bugwe North's Gideon Onyango, Kampala Central MP Mohammed Nsereko and Rubaga South MP Kato Lubwama described MTN's planned move to switch off subscribers by 28th as an illegality questioning where the telecom company was getting the mandate to act contrary to the government set deadline.
