Communications Commission of Kenya targets agents, customers in new unregistered SIM card laws

CCK Director General Francis Wangusi. The regulator also seeks to revise  penalties for offences committed by companies. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

By MACHARIA KAMAU

Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has conceded that current regulations on mobile phone subscriber registration are inadequate in clamping down unregistered SIM cards.

The telecommunications industry regulator said it is currently undertaking a review of the regulations that were gazetted in January to make agents and subscribers criminally liable for selling and using unregistered SIM cards.

CCK said the regulations do not make the agents of mobile operators and their customers liable in instances where unregistered SIM cards get into the market.

Currently, the regulations only hold the mobile operators liable for the sale and use of unregistered SIM cards on their networks.

In the recent weeks, law enforcement agencies have arrested agents selling SIM cards to customers without requiring them to submit their personal details.

The lines had also been pre-activated, meaning the users could use them before registering, which is against the regulations on subscriber registration issued early this year.

CCK Director General Francis Wangusi said an enhanced set of the subscriber registration regulations would hold criminally liable any agent selling pre-activated SIM cards as well as subscribers that use SIM cards without registering their personal details with mobile operators.

“The regulations that we have in place have a few loopholes in that they do not directly criminalise the agents of the telecommunication firms for selling SIM cards without registering them and the people buying and using unregistered SIM cards,” he said.

Criminally liable

“We are tightening them to hold both the agents and customers criminally liable,” he added.

Wangusi said the enhanced subscriber registration regulation should be in place within a month.

“We have already gone through the new regulations with the operators and agreed on the areas to be amended,” he said.

What remains, according to Wangusi, is to subject them to public views and thereafter promulgation by the government.

The government promulgated the regulations that address registration of subscribers of telecommunication services on December 28, 2012. The regulations came into force in January this year.

The recent weeks have seen pressure pile on the operators to fully implement the regulations, with the CCK accusing them of being lax and allowing unregistered numbers to continue operating on their networks.

The pressure went a notch higher due to claims that terrorists that attacked the Westgate Shopping Mall used mobile phones whose ownership could not be verified, meaning they had not been registered.

The regulations requiring users to submit their personal details, including physical home address, came after a surge in crime using mobile phones, with claims that criminal gangs use them to solicit ransom money for kidnappings.

Industry players

Wangusi also said that an amendment to the Kenya Information and Communications Act also seeks to review the penalties for offences committed by industry players.