DICT: Reactivating unregistered SIMs 'more tedious'

Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy reminded mobile subscribers who have not yet registered their SIMs to take advantage of the remaining hours of registration on Tuesday, July 25, 2023.

“Reminder, last chance for you to register your SIM cards up to midnight, tonight, after that you’ll no longer be able to use your SIM cards,” Uy told reporters at the sidelines of the Post-State of the Nation Address (SONA) Philippine Economic Briefing in Pasay City.

Last week, the DICT stood firm on the deadline, saying there will be no more extension and those with unregistered SIMs will immediately lose connection at 12:01 a.m. on July 26.

Those with unregistered SIM have only until 11:59 p.m. of July 25.

Despite the deactivation of unregistered SIMs a day after the deadline, the DICT said a five-day grace period for reactivation of the disconnected SIMs will be allowed.

But, Uy said, “It’s going to be a more tedious process if you need to reactivate those SIM cards.”

In a separate news release, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) reported that, as of July 24, the total number of registered SIMs was 105,917,844.

This represents 63.04% of the total number of reported active SIM subscribers as of December 2022 at 168,016,400.

Uy, for his part, said at over 105 million registered SIMs “we’re right on the dot in terms of our target.”

The NTC said the target is between 100 million to 110 million registered SIMs.

Of the 105.9 million registered SIMs, Smart has 49.99 million, Globe has 48.378 million and Dito has 7.458 million.

The NTC also reiterated to the public that there will no longer be any further extension in the deadline to register active SIMs.

In April, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. approved a 90-day extension of the SIM registration period until July 25 from the original deadline of April 26.

The DICT earlier said it will gradually deactivate some SIM services, such as access to social media accounts and the ability to make outgoing calls, as the 90-day additional registration period moves forward.

The NTC said that “failure to register SIMs by 11:59 p.m. of July 25 will result in the deactivation of telecommunication and mobile data services including social media access, except for the purpose of having these unregistered SIMs reactivated, but only up to July 30.”

“Access to online banking and other online financial transaction/facility shall also be deactivated,” the agency said.

“By July 31, all unregistered SIMs will be permanently deactivated and can no longer be reactivated/registered,” it added. —VAL, GMA Integrated News