NCC to Bar Unregistered Subscribers in March, To Commences Number Portability In September

The Nigerian Communications Commission has disclosed that unregistered SIM cards in the country will be blocked in March.

According to Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Eugene Juwah the NCC is currently ongoing the data harmonization exercise with the mobile networks which is slated to be finalized in February. Unregistered subscribers will have their lines blocked 30 days after that.

“The SIM card data is currently being uploaded at NCC onto our backend servers. So, it is a huge effort. There are operators who have registered 40 million subscribers and there are some who have registered less. Therefore, it takes time to upload these heavy data" he said.

“We are about concluding the uploading, though, we are a little bit behind schedule. But there is nothing you can do when some of the operators are having difficulty in uploading the data. After the harmonization exercise, registered subscribers will be enrolled in an automatic verification exercise" he added.

Eugene also revealed that SIM registration is an ongoing exercise adding that Number Portability will take effect from September of this year. Portability is the innovation that allows mobile network subscribers to move from one Network provider to the other in a seamless manner and without changing telephone numbers.