Successfully removed 12.5 million unregistered junk SIM cards

At the September press conference held on the afternoon of September 6, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) provided a lot of new information and data on blocking and filtering junk SIMs and non-owner SIMs.

Conducting a cross-check with the National Population Database, the Ministry of Information and Communications processed and filtered out 19.6 million subscribers whose information did not match. After the announcement, 7.15 million subscribers standardized their information.

To date, telecommunications companies have removed 12.5 million unregistered SIMs from the system. These are SIMs whose subscribers have not updated or standardized their information even though it is past the expiration date.

According to Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long, the Ministry of Information and Communications is resolutely handling the situation of SIM cards with incorrect subscriber information and SIM cards that are not owned by the owner.

“Previously, the Ministry of Information and Communications did not have a measure to check whether the subscriber information of the user was correct or not. This changed when the Ministry of Public Security launched the National Population Database. This is the basis for telecommunications enterprises to cross-check subscriber information,” said Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, there are currently 1.5 million new subscribers appearing on the market every month. Basically, all new subscribers have been checked with the National Population Database.

Currently, the three major networks, Viettel, VNPT, and MobiFone, account for 85% of new subscribers. These networks have connected directly to the National Population Database. When registering for a new subscription, the subscribers of these three networks will be cross-checked online. If they match the National Population Database, the new subscriber will be accepted.

The remaining carriers such as Vietnamobile, Wintel, Itel,... currently account for 15% of the total number of new subscribers to the market every month. These carriers have not yet connected to the National Population Database.

However, on a monthly basis, these carriers will have to send data on new subscribers to the Ministry of Information and Communications. In case after the reconciliation process, if the new subscriber does not match the National Population Database, the subscriber will be deleted from the system.

According to Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long, there is currently a situation where many people are willing to register for subscriptions under someone else’s name. This leads to a subscription with real registration information, name, and address but is actually in the hands of another user. Therefore, a number of users have contributed to the problem of SIM cards not being owned by the owner.