Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in Ghana have been mandated to, by end of April, issue a universal short code by which customers can check and know how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Cards, according to credible information available to Techfocus24 online news portal.
This comes
after Techfocus24 Editor, Sammy Dowuona blew the alarm in a Facebook post, on
how fraudulent SIM registration is going on, where some telcos are using the
Ghana Cards of innocent people, to register SIM cards for strangers, possibly fraudsters,
without the consent of the card owner.
This fraud
came to light when a chief (name withheld) who had three official SIM cards
linked to his Ghana Card, tried to register a fourth SIM on AirtelTigo, but got
feedback that he had exhausted his regulatory maximum allocation of ten SIM
cards per person. He then visited AirtelTigo only to find that seven other SIM
cards have been linked to his Ghana Card without his consent.
Sammy then
made several posts on social media calling on Ghanaians to go to their
respective telcos and check how many SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Card.
He also proposed that National Communications Authority (NCA) should mandate
all telcos to issue a universal short code for individuals to go check how many
SIM cards are linked to their Ghana Cards.
Subsequent to that expose, popular Ghanaian broadcaster and
owner of KofiTV, Kofi Adomah also went public and stated he went to MTN and
checked for himself, and found that indeed several other SIM cards have been
linked to his Ghana Card.
Then a
Facebooker by the name of Stevyn Laweh’s Daily also posted a similar experience
of how he personally found out at MTN that seven other SIM cards have been
linked to his Ghana Card.
Techfocus24
has just been told by a very reliable source that by the close of April, telcos
will put out a universal (common) short code that will allow all customers to
check and know how many SIM Cards are linked to their Ghana Cards.
According to
the source, for starters it will be “a short code for individual subscribers to
verify the number of SIMs associated with their Ghana Card – you just type the
short code on your phone, and after a verification process using your Ghana
Card PIN, the number of SIMs associated with your Ghana Card will be
displayed.”
The short
code will also show the list of all the actual phone numbers linked to a
particular Ghana Card, so that the card owner can tell whether he/she
personally registered those numbers or not.
Suggestions
Whereas that
is a step in the right direction towards building a robust SIM register devoid
of the flaws found in the previous one, it would also be important for telcos
to be mandated to always send SMS in real time to the primary numbers on any
Ghana Card anytime a new SIM is linked to the card.
Closely
related to that, telcos must also be mandate to send our messages to all
primary numbers on every Ghana Card with the list of SIM cards currently linked
to the Ghana Card.
Again, the
feedback message from the universal short code to be provided by the telco
should be in the form of an SMS which can be stored on our phones, and not just
a one time pop-up message.
