China's 200 million mobile phone subscribers who use prepaid
cards will soon have to register with their providers or risk
having their lines cut.
The new requirement is part of China's efforts to verify the
owner of every phone number in the country as it tries to control
telephone-related fraud and unauthorized transmissions including
pornographic content.
The general plans for the new procedure were announced yesterday
by a Ministry of Information Industry official who was interviewed
by sina.com. Implementation is expected to begin by the end of the
year, and phone customers will probably have six months after that
to submit the paperwork.
"It's unfair if we require only new mobile phone users to
register and ignore existing customers," Chen Yuping, a senior
official at the ministry's China Academy of Telecommunication
Research, said.
"More important, the registration mechanism loses its
effectiveness in that case."
Customers now have two choices when they buy a mobile phone in
China. They can be billed for services at the end of each month, in
which case they must register with the phone company by showing an
identity card. Or they can simply buy prepaid phone cards that are
widely available.
The new rule requires new and existing prepaid customers to
produce identification when purchasing a SIM card.?
At the end of October, China Mobile's prepaid customers numbered
177 million out of 238.7 million subscribers.
China Unicom, the smaller of the country's major mobile
providers, did not reveal figures, but industry officials believe
the number of prepaid customers in total is at least 200 million in
China.
"Current prepaid users will be required to go to the mobile
operators' outlets with their identity cards to register," Chen
said.
Shanghai Mobile and Shanghai Unicom, which are subsidiaries of
China Mobile and China Unicom, are already ahead of the country in
demanding more accountability from their customers. They
implemented registration for prepaid customers on September
1.
By requiring registration by all mobile phone users, China says it
can do a better job in eliminating short-message-system advertising
spam and scams, financial fraud and the transmission of
pornography.
(Shanghai Daily December 2, 2005)