SIM card registration exercise starts today

The SIM card registration exercise will officially kick off today. The three telecom players, Tigo, MTN and Airtel will conduct the exercise and sensitise subscribers, with the sector watchdog as the supervisor. The exercise is targeting a combined 5.2 million subscribers of the three telecom operators.Jean Baptiste Mutabazi, the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) head of communication, had earlier told Business Times that the exercise had started last month with test registration. “This exercise will take six months and we expect all mobile phone owners to have registered their SIM cards by then,” Mutabazi added. SIM is an abbreviation for subscriber identity module. A SIM card is a valuable memory card which stores all the information on your phone, such as pictures, videos, music and contact numbers.The SIM card registration is part of the regional exercise. Under the East Africa Communications Organisation, the East Africa Community set mid-2012 as the deadline to have all existing SIM cards registered.The sim card registration process is also being conducted globally and has already been done successfully in Mauritius, Ghana and South Africa where you cannot buy a sim card without registering.It is intended to cub cyber-crime and enhance security of lives and property of Rwandans.

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SIM card registration exercise starts today