Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 21) — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said it will meet with telecommunications companies and other stakeholders on April 24 to discuss matters related to the mandatory SIM registration and decide whether an extension will be implemented or not.
“We’ll be meeting with the telcos and other stakeholders on Monday in order to find out what’s actually the status and the current situation with respect to the registration,” DICT Sec. Ivan Uy told CNN Philippines’ The Source on Friday.
He noted that the decision on whether to give owners of unregistered SIMs more days to comply will depend on the data and discussions at the meeting on Monday.
While the SIM Registration Act allows an extension of up to 120 days, the DICT on Wednesday rejected the appeal of telcos to move the deadline currently set on April 26.
Uy said sticking to the original deadline significantly pushed the number of daily registrations recorded.
“For the past several weeks, we have seen very encouraging numbers. We’re hitting more than a million registration almost daily compared to just a few hundred thousand for the past several months,” he noted.
So far, around 78 million of some 100 million active users have registered their SIMs, Uy said.
The total number is lower than the reported 168 million SIMs up for registration, which the DICT chief said is bloated because this includes disposable cards being used by scammers.
While the decision on the extension will be decided on Monday, Uy still urged the public to register now since they were already given six months to comply.
“If they were not able to do it for a period of six months… what’s going to change if we extend it for say maybe 30 more days or 60 more days. They still won’t do it,” Uy pointed out.
Aside from concerns on the deadline, Uy said authorities will also discuss other issues raised, like allowing other IDs apart from those stated under the law.
Globe earlier pointed out this concern saying that not all of its subscribers have access to government ID.
Meanwhile, Junk SIM Registration Network spokesperson Maded Batara III said their group will stage a protest on Friday in front of the DICT headquarters to inform the agency “why they shouldn’t interrupt the people’ s access to communication.”
As the DICT, it is the department’s role to ensure that people are able to access means of communication, he said.
Scaring people into losing their access to communication and forcing the April 26 deadline is beyond the mandate of the agency, he added
“We hope to pressure the DICT in the next few days, especially now with this petition going on, to ensure that they are in touch with the demand of the people and to consider the request of the telcos to extend or even to stop the implementation of the law and hopefully have an earnest conversation about the privacy and free speech aspects,” Batara said.
