Telcos ride on fake ID cards

POST TIME: 20 September, 2015 00:00 00 AM / LAST MODIFIED: 16 October, 2015 08:14:00 PM

40 lakh out of 57 lakh SIM documents scrutinised so far use fake NIDs

SHAHED SIDDIQUE

Telcos ride on fake ID cards

About 40 lakh or 70 per cent out of 57 lakh SIM documents, submitted by the telecoms operators to the Election Commission until yesterday, have turned out to be fake. Considering that the country currently has about 13 crore mobile phone subscribers, this number may just be the tip of the iceberg.
In one revealing instance, a single NID (National Identity) card bearing number 19844425883698712 was used to register 6,858 SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, the NID registration wing of the Election Commission (EC) discovered as it began scrutinising SIM card owners’ information provided by the six mobile phone operators of the country.
SIM registration documents provided by state-owned operator Teletalk were found to be the most authentic so far while those from Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone operator, had the most number of discrepancies, said EC officials.
Terming this prevalence of fake information in telecoms sector a great ‘concern’, Brigadier General Sultanuzzaman Mohammad Saleh, Director of the NID project, said most of the registration data submitted by the operators are not authentic as those do not match with the data stored at the NID centre.
Sources in the post, telecommunications and IT ministry and in the EC said there is an organised network across the country which is involved in making and distributing fake NIDs to SIM card dealers. It is mandatory for SIM card dealers to submit NIDs to the telecoms operators for obtaining SIM cards for sale.
While completing the scrutinising of SIM card documents provided by the mobile service providers until yesterday, NID officials found that around 70 per cent of the information filed against SIM cards doesn’t match with the information given by people to the NID. The percentage of fake documents was 90 as on Thursday, officials at the NID registration wing of the EC told The Independent.
They further said they have identified about 50 NID cards, each of which has more than 2,000 SIMs registered against it.
There might be more SIMs registered against these numbers as this was the statistics of the information submitted by the mobile service providers just in the first week, the NID officials added.
Earlier, backtracking from her tough stance on starting the re-registration of SIM cards by September 13, State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim asked the mobile service operators to provide lists of all mobile subscribes to the NID registration wing for scrutiny.
The state minister issued the directive so that fraudulent registrations could be identified, reducing the crimes associated with the availability of SIM cards bearing fake owner’s information.
Until Thursday (Sept 17), the six mobile service providers submitted information of a total of 27,11,316 SIM cards to the NID registration wing that maintains the NID database.
Among the operators, Grameenphone submitted information of 2,75,000, Banglalink 2,55,000, Robi 1,11,686, Airtel 3,54,938, Citycell 1,55,00 and Teletalk 1,55,9692 SIM cards.
Talking to The Independent, the director of the NID project said, “It’s a matter of national security and we are taking this whole verification process very seriously. After information verification and completing the scrutiny process, we will identify the real subscribers and the fake ones.”
Two copies of separate lists of actual subscribers and fake subscribes will be handed over to the telecoms ministry as well as the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), he added.
An official with the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and Information Technology, who preferred to remain unnamed, told The Independent that the problem with SIM registration is manifold. On one hand, subscribers show reluctance in providing information while buying a SIM card, on the other, those who want to commit crime can easily complete the registration using fake NIDs.
On March 7, police arrested two people from Tongi along with 53,100 fake NID cards. They later confessed that they mainly distributed the fake NID cards through retailers for selling SIM cards without proper document.
Talking to The Independent, State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim said the ministry has taken a strong stance due to the prevalence of fake registration information. She said the ministry is planning to go through systematic steps to streamline the entire registration process. She said that many subscribers brought more than one SIM cards showing a single NID. In such cases, operators will phone them or send SMS to know whether they own the SIM or not.
If such subscribers fail to verify the SIMs sold against their NIDs, the authorities will deactivate them, she said, adding that if unauthorised SIM cards are detected following the completion of the scrutiny process, the mobile service providers will have to pay a large amount as fine.
She said the operators will continue advertisement to sensitise their subscribers to register their SIM cards as soon as possible. Tarana also said the BTRC will soon sign an agreement with the NID registration wing of EC, aiming to verify SIM cards. An official of the BTRC told The Independent that the government is planning to introduce biometric authentication system to prevent forgery in the SIM registration process.
The official said new SIM cards would be activated as much as 72 hours after its registration, only after verifying the information provided by the user with the information preserved in the national identity database.
Officials at the telecoms ministry said the ministry has already sent letters to the mobile service providers, issuing necessary instructions to introduce biometric authentication system from December 16 this year.
Meanwhile, Nurul Kabir, Secretary General of Association of Mobile Telephone Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB), said any government initiative to stop the trade of unregistered SIM cards will have little chance of success unless the mobile service providers have access to the NID database to verify the identity of customers.
He said mobile service providers are ready to provide full support to the government to unearth fake subscribers. “The operators also want to identify the fake subscribers and we are completely in agreement with the government about this,” he said. Bangladesh’s telecoms operators faced punitive actions for involvement in illegal VoIP (voice over internet protocol) operation during the 2007-8 Army-backed caretaker government. Grameenphone was fined on two occasions in 2007 and 2008 for offering illegal VoIP services, compelling the company to pay Tk 418 crore to the telecoms regulator. Moreover, AKTEL, which is now Robi, was fined Tk 145 crore, Banglalink was fined Tk 125 crore and Citycell was fined Tk 150 crore for their illegal VoIP operations.