President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. yesterday signed into law a measure making cellphone SIM registration compulsory, in a key step towards fighting text scams, bank fraud and misinformation.
The law will require users to furnish full names and identity documents before buying a SIM card, with the aim of preventing criminals from concealing their identities.
Local telecom operators Smart Communications Inc., Globe Telecom Inc. and Dito Telecommunity Corp. welcomed the swift passage.
Telcos also reiterated that they ready to participate in the crafting of the bill’s Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR).
“We are ready to participate in the formulation of the IRR within the prescribed period,” Roy Ibay, Smart head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement,
“There is a clamor from public telecommunication entities like Smart to be given more time to prepare and test its systems to ensure the safety of the information that will be collected from prepaid subscribers — as an information campaign on the SIM (subscriber identity module) registration process will be launched and Smart will ensure to provide its prepaid customers a smooth and hassle-free experience upon registry of their SIMs,” he added.
Globe said it is working with the government in drafting the IRR for the rational enforcement of the law, including the rollout of the retroactive registration of tens of millions of prepaid SIM users.
“We support the passage of this measure after previous roadblocks and we are ready to comply. Aside from our advanced cybersecurity capabilities, we welcome a new regulatory environment that has stronger safeguards against cyberthreats and other crimes carried out using mobile phones,” said Froilan Castelo, Globe general counsel.
Globe said a verifiable and fool-proof identification system is the foundation of the SIM Registration law. If people are allowed to submit any form of identification which can easily be falsified, SIM registration will be useless for law enforcers and fraudsters will continue to operate.
“For this reason, our position has been clear from the beginning, a National ID system must be in place to ensure the safe and successful implementation of this new law,” said Castelo.
“We have mentioned in previous statements that it will greatly help if both the national ID system and the passport system will be used as the validation of the identity of the subscriber. Doing so will unburden the telcos of the need to establish another database to store biometrics data, which would be time consuming and resource heavy,” said Rodolfo Santiago, Dito chief technology officer. – Myla Iglesias, Reuters
