The telecoms regulator is set to block more than 2 million SIMs on Thursday (Apr 25) midnight as their owners had registered more than 15 SIMs against one national identity (NID) card.
A maximum of 15 mobile phone connections can be subscribed against a single NID card, according to a Jun 2016 order by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
On Dec 31, 2017, the government gave a two-month deadline to subscribers for deactivating their excess SIM cards.
“The effort will discipline the sector as well as ensure safe usage of mobile SIMs,” BTRC Chairman Md Jahurul Haque told Bangla Tribune on Thursday.
According to BTRC officials, the process to block SIMs will start from midnight and it might take some seven to eight hours to deactivate some 20,050,000 connections.
The regulator has detected at least 100,000 NID cards which had registered more than 15 SIMs cards each.
Meanwhile, mobile phone operators’ body AMTOB have pleaded to BTRC seeking more time to deactivate connections obtained by breaching the rule.
Subscribers can find the total number of SIM cards registered against their NID cards by dialling *16001# from their handsets and then providing the last four digits of their NID card number.