President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has extended the SIM registration deadline by 90 days, Malacañang announced on Tuesday.
The measure was adopted upon the recommendation of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) during a meeting in the Palace.
The original deadline for SIM card registration was Wednesday, April 26.
DICT Secretary Ivan Uy appealed to Filipinos to “take advantage” of the extension to register their SIM cards.
The DICT chief said 82 million SIM cards had been registered, while “around 15 to 20 million” active SIM cards were yet to be registered.
“So with that 90 days, we believe that that will already give a lot of time to the public in order to fulfill the requirements of the law on the SIM card registration,” he said.
According to the law, the SIM card that has been deactivated can be reactivated within five days from the time of automatic deactivation.
“Eventually, once we reach the 90-day, you will lose completely all services to all your SIM card. So those are still being threshed out by the telcos as to which ones will be easier for them to implement and how do we schedule the gradual reduction of the services,” Uy said.
Uy reported to Marcos Jr. that the DICT had pinpointed areas with fewer registrants and that in the next 90 days, his agency would prioritize the SIM card registration process in remote islands and isolated communities. John Ezekiel J. Hirro