NCA announces deactivation of over 11 million unregistered SIM cards by May 31

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has announced that over 11 million unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated on May 31, 2023.

The 11 million SIMs include subscribers who were exempted from the current exercise. These include diplomats, refugees, and Ghanaians on official duties outside the country.

Others include subscribers who have registered some of their SIMs, people with Ghana Cards who have refused to register, as well as others without Ghana cards.

Addressing the press in Accra, the Director General of the NCA, Joe Anokye, said, “One of the things to note is that active mass SIM registration for existing SIMs is coming to a close and as mentioned earlier, we have about 11 million SIMs which are yet to begin the registration process, these subscribers have up to the end of May 2023 to complete their SIM registration or have their SIMs deactivated from the network”.

He assured that the data safety of Mobile subscribers within the Central SIM registration database is intact.

Concerns have been raised about some breaches of data by industry watchers, but the Authority says the integrity of the system is intact.

Mr. Anokye said “we wish to assure the general public that the SIM Database has not been breached. In the first place, there has been no unauthorised access to the SIM Registration database; the identified abuses of stage one process, which have been resolved, do not amount to unauthorised access to the SIM Registration database”.

The NCA also justified a directive to major industry player, MTN to suspend its data zone service.

Mr. Joe Anokye said MTN which had been identified as a Significant Market Player breached regulations.

“MTN should not charge lower for voice, SMS, and data. MTN should not charge off-net calls. MTN has so far been in compliance with the directive. However, in January 2023, the NCA took notice of MTN data zone bundle, the 24-hour data bundle for the various data allocations. Some market players raised concerns, NCA engaged MTN and reviewed the product. We realised that the MTN data bundle was the lowest on the market and in violation of the directive. It was directed to discontinue the service,” he explained.