Pre-Activated SIM No more in Pakistan!! from 31st Jan 2009

by Teleco Analyst on January 28, 2009

Before we start discussion about the decision of government to end the pre-activated SIM regime in Pakistan, letâ€™s just understand concept of pre-active connection. It means that when a customer buys a connection, the SIM is already activated on the operatorâ€™s system and the customer just needs to put it in the phone and start using the service. The advantage of pre-active SIM is that it provides the customer convenience in form ofÂ ready to use service. This has played a very important role in the aggressive growth of market in past as operators have even crossed a million activation in a month.

During last one year, the topic of non-verified SIM has been quite hot in media & the government has taken a lot of steps to curtail and end this menace. According to PTA record, 5 millions of SIM have been blocked in last few months because of lack of data available against the such connections.

To ensure that the data is complete and accurate against SIM, Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) has introduced a new system for sale and activation of SIM from 1st February, 2009. Under the new procedure, all the operators will be selling in-active SIM in the market and once the verification is complete from NADRA the SIM will be activated.

The new procedure adopted for activation of SIM from 1st February 2009 will be as following:

The sale outlets i.e. the franchisees, retailers and mobile company customer service centers, will sell inactive SIMs. After the sale of inactive SIM has been made the customer will call at call center of mobile company at 789 from that SIM.

It would be a free call. The call center representative will ask few questions to verify customerâ€™s particulars. If the answers are correct the SIM will be activated.

The customers will be given an instructions card highlighting activation procedure. In non-activated mode, the SIMs will be programmed to dial call centers. According to new directive from the regulator, a person can keep maximum 10 connections under NADRA data.

The interesting observation will be the impact of this new regime onÂ already badly hit cellular industry. The previous experience of mobile number portability (MNP) has shown that difficult and cumbersome procedure acts as a barrier for use of service. Once this system is implemented it is really interesting to see if this will end the menace of incorrect data against connection because the verification will be against NADRA database. If there is any data available in NADRA and is provided by a customer theÂ the system will consider it as authentic sale, whereas the actual user might be different user, making it a illegal sale.

The impacts of this regime will be visible in next few months but one thing is for sure that sales of cellular operators will be hit negatively due to additional process of activation of customers. Only time will tell how badly they are affect!