Digicel To Feel Brunt Of SIM Deactivation In PNG

Digicel was the hardest hit yesterday when more than half of its SIM – subscriber identity module – card customers in Papua New Guinea were deactivated from its mobile network.

Only 1.2 million of its 2.6 million SIM card holders had registered.

While 1.4 million SIMs were deactivated from 12 o’clock last night. The deactivation would continue for 24 hours.

In a surprise statistic from NICTA – National Information and Communications Technology Authority – despite ease of access to registration sites in the National Capital District, of all Digicel customers in the city only 41 per cent had registered, according to chief executive officer Charles Punaha.

“So another 59 per cent are yet to register in NCD. This to us is not a very good indication of the willingness of the subscriber to register their SIM cards,” he said.

“The only way forward now is for us and the network operators to start deactivating today, at midnight.

“One of the issues that we do not understand in the case of Digicel is that they have only registered 46 per cent

“They obviously will be deactivating 54 per cent by Tuesday (today) and what we don’t understand is why they were not aggressive in their registration exercise if this process is going to have an impact on their revenue.” He said the only hope is when customers realise their SIMs have been deactivated, hopefully the operator will regain its customers quickly.

“Subscribers will realise that they need go back and get themselves registered because nowadays everybody relies on mobile phones for both business and contacting their family. “We are hoping by Tuesday (today) when the deactivation is done in a short time period once they realise their cards will be deactivated they will make their way to the service providers,” he said.

“We are not bluffing”, were the words used by NICTA chief executive officer Charles Punaha as the deactivation process starts for about 1,477,000 unregistered SIM cards. The National Information and Communications Technology Authority spent most of yesterday cutting the country’s more than 2.8 million mobile communication subscribers in half as it enforced requirements under the SIM card regulations of 2016.