SIM Re-registration: MTN Subscribers Lament Network Failure, Card Blockage

MTN customers across the country have continued to express unhappiness on the way the ongoing Subscriber Identification Module, SIM, registration exercise is being processed.

For some of the subscribers, they have become regular customers at MTN stands because efforts to get registered have not been successful even though their details had been entered into the system and as such had to revisit the centres again and again with the hope of getting it done some day.

Others said it had been an effort in futility even though that it was not convenient to turn up for the exercise as they ended up having their lines blocked despite presenting themselves for the exercise but could not register due to network failure, while efforts at retrieving these lines after several attempts had proved so hard.

For this category of subscribers, the issue has been that they turned up for the exercise and did register but still get messages from the telecommunications firm to register their SIM, implying that they had not registered even after doing so several times.

“It was not easy for me to come down here and register again having registered this same SIM for more than three times. Besides the stress of coming down here, the queue here is terrible. Now we have done what they asked us to do but I still get the same message to come for registration. I have come here several times to complain but the agent kept assuring me that it will be resolved. Now the line has been cut off and effort to retrieve it for a week now is not yielding result. I think the best bet for me is to switch to another network,” said Seye Owolabi, one of the aggrieved subscribers at a registration centre in Abule Egba, a suburb of Lagos.

When THISDAY visited some of the registration centres during the week, the expression on the faces of affected subscribers was not encouraging. Some of the agents who were questioned on the reason for the hitches, attributed the development to system failure.

It would be recalled that early this year, the telecommunications giant issued a directive requesting its customers to embark on a fresh registration of their SIM cards in order to update their biometrics, a situation which has generated uproar from members of the public who saw such request as becoming too much of MTN, having done several registrations.

Effort to hear from the company on how they can address the issue to help the affected subscribers proved abortive as they failed to respond to enquiries sent to them.