September 23, 2007	Sunday	Ramazan 10, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: Taking strict action against mobile SIM sellers not adhering to standard procedures, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Saturday directed cellular phone operators to immediately seal and terminate registration of their six major franchises located in different cities across the country.

The authority has issued directions for the closing of two franchises of Mobilink (Centre Point Gulberg Lahore and Haleem Telecom Al-Haj Plaza Chowk Gulabad, Peshawar), one franchise Ufone (Zakariaya Shopping Centre Bosan Road Multan), one franchise of Telenor (7-Circular Road Lahore) one franchise of Warid Telecom (Dar Communication Gari Shahu, Allama Iqbal Road, Lahore) and one franchise of CMPak (Paktel) (Latifabad No-7, Hyderabad).

Prior to the action, the PTA had warned franchises and customer service centre to follow the procedure by asking for Nadra national identity card before selling SIMs to customers for authentication.

According to a statement, the PTA had taken serious view of non-verification of SIMs and had warned for further action against franchises not following the PTA procedures for issuance of new SIMs.

A clear policy had already been devised and issued to mobile operators for verification of subscribers’ antecedents and cleaning of old data.

The authority said that two surveys of customer service centres, franchises and retailers of all companies had been conducted by PTA’s zonal offices located at Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta to determine the progress on issuance of new phone connection after fulfilling the requirements in line with the instructions.

The shortcomings observed on part of the mobile phone operators in first survey were communicated to the CEOs of mobile companies to be redressed. They were also informed about the possible legal actions against those who violated the procedures.

Similarly, the second survey conducted in September 2007 had revealed marked improvement in understanding of the procedure by the franchises and their retailers and compliance with the directives of the authority.

The operators were instructed to take strict action against the franchises that were still issuing the connections without verification of antecedents. The direction to seal six franchises was the result of these surveys.

The companies had been instructed to clean the records through the Nadra. For the purpose, the operators were sending heavy logs to the Nadra on weekly basis and were taking action against the unverified subscriber numbers.