The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Tuesday reported that more than 20 million SIM cards had been registered in the country nearly a month since the implementation of the SIM Card Registration Act.
In a Palace briefing, DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said the government was having difficulties making SIM registration more accessible in remote areas without a Wi-Fi connection.
To solve this, he said the government would launch a “caravan” aimed at reaching people in these areas and encouraging them to register their SIM cards.
“In order to help our remote areas because the bigger issues actually are those remote areas where they do not have any Wi-Fi connection where they can do the registration, we have launched a SIM card registration caravan that is going to all those remote areas,” Uy said.
According to the DICT, the number of SIM cards being sold daily has declined since the implementation of the SIM Card Registration Act.
“Since nag-announce tayo nito, bumagsak ang bentahan ng SIM cards dahil dati itong mga scammers, itong mga sindikato bili nang bili ng SIM card, tapon, SIM card, tapon, ngayon alam nila na hindi na nila magagawa iyon so bumagsak ngayon iyong bentahan ng SIM cards which we actually anticipated that will happen,” he said.
Uy claimed the number of scam and spam messages had declined since SIM registration opened in late December.
“Dati, before this law was signed, ilang text messages ang natatanggap ninyo sa isang araw; at ngayon, ilan po? I’m sure all of you felt the significant drop. Dati, I get about six or seven, now one or two,” he said. John Ezekiel J. Hirro