Tanzania’s telecom regulator Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) blocked over 900,000 unverified SIM cards on February 13. The authority has already announced that it will deactivate a total of over 2 million such SIM cards very soon.
The block SIM cards account for 1.58 percent of the country’s total mobile phone users. The regulator has offered a 90-day period to prove their authenticity to revert the blocked SIM cards into service.
The move comes after the government started implementing various measures to contain criminal activities. The African country’s regulator is cooperating with mobile operators in verifying SIM card registration by ensuring that the subscribers’ fingerprints match the government’s National Identification Authority (NIDA) database.
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Speaking about the act, TCRA manager for telecom Sadath Kalolo said that 60,076,000 active SIM cards have been identified.
The 20,61,000 SIM cards remain unverified which represents 4.3 percent of the total which are likely to be put out of service by the regulatory body.