ISLAMABAD, Oct 7: Surveys carried out by the government have shown violations of Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs) on Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) verifications by franchises and retailers, officials said on Tuesday.

A joint survey carried out by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and the cellular services operators revealed that franchises and retailers were selling SIMs without seeking national identity cards from customers. Submitting a copy of the CNIC is mandatory under the PTA laws.

Expressing his concerns over the violations, PTA Chairman Dr Mohammed Yaseen presided over a high-level meeting of the cellular firms’ chief executive officers to discuss the progress on different deadlines given by the PTA for blocking unregistered SIMs.

Emphasising that the PTA may take stern action against the mobile companies on the basis of these violations, the chairman discussed the condition of blocking more than 10 connections issued on a single CNIC.

The meeting also deliberated upon the proposed project for “Activation of SIMs After Verification”.

The meeting was informed that after considerable efforts, 10.5 million connections had been blocked so far. In first phase, connections sold until April 30, 2008, had been verified through the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra). More than 7.3 million connections found “unverified” were blocked.

In the second phase, PTA is endeavoring to sort out data of connections sold from May 1 to May 30, 2008. To date, a total of 600,000 connections which remained unverified had been blocked.

The PTA chairman informed the CEOs that a considerable improvement had been seen in the verification process, however, the authority felt that unless sale of pre-active SIMs were not stopped, full implementation on the SOPs would not be possible.

The meeting discussed in detail the proposed system under which company would sell non-activated SIMs and mobile companies would activate the connections after verification of subscriber’s particulars from Nadra.