Telecom operators have re-verified a total of 47.4 million SIMs against 35.6 million CNICs, while another 5.6 million SIMs were blocked till February 15th, 2015, said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
According to these stats, a total of 53 million SIMs have been processed (either re-verified or blocked) while another 53 million SIMs are pending re-verification.
Not to mention, mobile SIMs of those customers with more than 3 SIMs on their CNICs, will be blocked on February 27th, 2015 while all remaining un-verified SIMs (even with 1 SIM per CNIC) will get blocked on April 14th, 2015.
Telecom operators are fearing that a good chunk of SIMs will get blocked on February 27th, 2015, due to the fact that schedule given by the government for re-verification of SIMs was too packed and that they could do a lot better if they were given enough time for re-verification of SIMs.
It won’t be out of place to mention that telecom operators are likely to bear heavy losses due to deactivation of (active but unverified) SIMs on Feb 27th, 2015.
A recent TV program aired by Abb Tak also discussed the issue of SIM re-verification in which Sohaib Sheikh, senior telecom expert, opined that operators should be given at least 2 more months to smoothly conclude the re-verification drive.
