Philippines extends SIM registration by 90 days
THE PHILIPPINE government has extended the deadline for SIM (subscriber identity modules) card registration by 90 days, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
Three months should be enough for Filipinos to register, DICT Secretary Ivan John E. Uy told a news briefing on Tuesday.
The extension of the deadline, originally set for April 26, is meant to avoid disrupting critical mobile services, Senator Mary Grace S. Poe-Llamanzares said in a separate statement.
She urged telecommunication companies to “mobilize and go down to the grassroots to reach out to more of their subscribers.”
Only 49.3% or 82.8 million of 168 million active SIMs in the Philippines have been registered as of April 23.
The government managed to get many SIM cards registered by not announcing the extension until Tuesday, Mr. Uy said, noting that registrations averaged more than a million daily recently.
“Earlier, for several months, we were only registering about a hundred thousand SIM cards” he said. “But in the last two weeks, we were averaging more than a million SIM card registrations per day.”
“That just goes to show that the issue is not really limited ID or anything; it’s just our bad habit of delaying to the last-minute compliance with the law.”
Mr. Uy said the government is in talks with telecommunication companies to gradually cut services for users of unregistered SIM cards.
Mobile phone users who fail to register within the 60-day mark of the 90-day extension might lose access to some of their social media accounts such as Facebook or TikTok, he said.
The government also wants to limit their ability to make or receive calls as the new deadline approaches, he added.
He said the gradual removal of services would make Filipinos feel the urgency of SIM registration. “Clearly, our countrymen are just hard-headed.”
Members of civic groups have called the SIM card registration law anti-poor, saying it does not consider the situation of Filipinos who do not have state IDs and internet connection.
Among those who struggle to comply with the registration are indigenous groups, majority of whom do not have any IDs required for registration.
Many of them still use basic phones, making online registration difficult. There are also communities where internet access is limited or nonexistent.
Mr. Uy said people who have difficulty registering their SIM cards should coordinate with their village leaders. They may use their village ID for the registration process.
Telecommunication companies and the government will continue deploying mobile services to areas with low registration rates, such as Tawi-Tawi in southern Philippines, to give support and internet access.
The SIM Registration Act allows an extension of as long as 120 days.
Thirty days after the deadline, the DICT may deactivate all unregistered SIM cards and conduct a “catch-up registration” to allow reactivation, Mr. Uy said.
As this developed the Supreme Court ordered the government to comment on a lawsuit seeking to void the registration law. It has 10 days to do so, court spokesman Brian Keith Hosaka told a news briefing on Tuesday.
Name respondents in the lawsuit filed by the Union of Journalists of the Philippines this month were DICT, the Education and Interior and Local Government departments. Also sued were the National Telecommunication Commission, National Privacy Commission and telecommunication companies Globe Telecom, Inc., Smart Communications, Inc., PLDT, Inc., DITO Telecommunity Corp., Digitel Mobile Philippines, Inc. and Cherry Mobile Communications.
A group of journalists, activists, human rights defenders and civil society leaders filed on April 17 a petition seeking to stop SIM card registration and void the law for being illegal.
They said the registration is a form of prior restraint and violates freedom of speech and privacy. — Norman P. Aquino and Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza
