Indonesia to strengthen Prepaid Card Registration

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kemenkominfo) together with members of the Association of Telecommunications providers of Indonesia (ATSI) operators have strengthen prepaid SIM card registration on December 15, 2015.

The plan has been carried out since last year by refering to the Minister of Communication and Information Technology Number 23 / M.Kominfo / 10/2005 on registration of the Customer Services.

"We have begun to strengthen the new SIM cards registration and for existing costumer it will be discussed further with the operators" said Director General of Post and Information Technology Ministry of Communications Kalamullah Ramli in Jakarta, Tuesday (15/12).

The strengthenin effort is aimed to reduce mobile numbers misuse, such as spam text messages (Sms) for banking products or scams.

ATSI secretary general Merza Fachys emphasized that the tighter registration will be easy for customers and operators. "There should be no difference. This even make the industry healthier. We can minimized the pre-registered SIM cards selling practices," he said.

As for data validation, ATSI is handing it over to the government. "We will give all of the data to the government for validation," said Merza.

Kalamullah said that the prepaid customer registration mechanism  the Ministry of Communication and the operator will cooperate with the Directorate General of Civil Registration of the Ministry of the Interior to verify the Identification Number.

"After the registration validation. We ask the customer to register their own identification number to be easily verified," he said.

New Procedures
The new prepaid card activation stage is arranged Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) to establish registration mechanism using a modified STK 4444 or any other registration provided by telecommunications operators by adding the prepaid card's seller identity.

The data that must be presented for the activation consisting of:
1. The telephone number of prepaid services that will be used.
2. Identity details according to the National Identity Card / Driving License / Passport / Student Card, namely: number, name, place / date of birth and address.

To make the data easy to verify abd traceable, a cooperation agreement between the telecommunications operators with the prepaid SIM card seller (distributor / outlet / retail outlet / stall) must be:
1. Registration of prepaid customers must be performed by retailers who poses legitimate identity (ID) issued by the telecommunications operator.
2. Registration of prepaid customers is then verify the data based on the legitimate identity detail from the customer identification card (KTP / SIM / Passport / Student Card)

This new regulation will ensure distributors to carry out the registration process according to the regulations. If later found missmatched data, the First Party (operator / distributor / sub-distributor / outlet) are entitled to request clarification to the second party (distributor / sub-distributor / outlet / retail outlets / stalls).

If any case found of missmatched identity of costumer data caused by the seller's negligence then the operator or .ain dealer entitled to impose sanctions to the Second Party.

Sanctions ranging from a warning in the form of a written and / or review of the terms and conditions of distribution / sale of the pre-paid SIM cards.

Indonesia carried out the first SIM card registration in 2005. At that time, approximately 9.34% of the 58 million prepaid number are scorched numbers because the data is considered invalid.

Indonesia is a country that has bigger number of active SIM card over the population. There are at least 270 million active numbers with 370 million cards in circulation.

The impact of the SIM cards bombardier into the marke wasted at least 3 trillion Rupiah wasted every year in pursuit of activation.

The success key lies in the validity of the registration program data. Moreover, as reported that currently only 6% of the total number of prepaid cards are guaranteed for its validity after going through the verification process.(es)