THE government on Tuesday heeded the clamor to extend the deadline for the registration of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards for 90 days to avoid disfranchising key sectors and disrupt the march to digitalization, but laid out options it will take to ensure compliance with the SIM registration law.
For one, it is now eyeing gradual service disruption to “incentivize” the public to comply within the extension period, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
In a press conference in Malacañang, DICT Secretary Ivan E. Uy said they are considering removing some services such as placing outgoing calls for mobile users with unregistered SIM cards for the first 30 or 60 days of the extended registration period.
“We’re still deciding on the date—but, let’s say, after the 60 days, you will lose your access to your Facebook accounts or to your TikTok accounts. But you still can use your phone—you can still call; you can still text, and then after a certain period, you will lose your outgoing calls so that way, ramdam ninyo kung anong [you will feel the] effect na hindi kayo nagpaparehistro [of not having registered],” Uy told reporters.
He said they are also studying the possible restricting of social media access for unregistered SIM cards.
“So for those who are hard-headed and difficult to convince of our seriousness, they will get a taste of our incentives,” Uy said in Filipino.
DICT said it will be coordinating with telecommunication firms to implement the measures. The telcos, who with government are respondents in a petition in the Supreme Court to declare the SIM law unconstitutional, hailed news of the extension for 90 days. See story in Companies, B2.
“We will talk about it [options to incentivize compliance] since it will require an amendment in the IRR [implementing rules and regulations] [for the registration]. We are working on those options because if we do nothing and just extend [the registration period] by 90 days, we will still have the same problem [of late registration],” Uy said.
After the 90-day period, unregistered SIM cards will be deactivated and users will lose access to their e-wallets and whatever financial services are linked to it.
Uy, however, said they may consider a “catch up” registration after the 90-day period to allow the deactivated SIM Card to be used again.
Bad habit
As with any registration requirement, he said many SIM card holders have apparently procrastinated in complying with Republic Act (RA) No. 11934 or the SIM Registration Act.
“For several months we were only registering about 100,000 SIM card registrants, but in the last two weeks we [have been] registering more than a million SIM card registration per day. That goes to show the issue is not really limited ID or anything, it is just the bad habit of delaying to the last minute the compliance with the law,” Uy explained.
Currently, there are already 82 million registered SIM cards, according to Uy.
Another 15 million to 20 million are expected to be registered during the 90-day extended registration period.
“The remaining 50 million [unregistered SIM cards] are the ones that are disposable, so to speak, and used for scamming or telemarketing,” Uy said.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. decided to extend the registration period, which is supposed to end on April 26, 2023, after seeing the areas with the low turnout of registration are the isolated island provinces such as Dinagat, Siquijor, Camiguin, Tawi-Tawi, and Basilan.
“So when it [statistics] was presented, the President noticed we need more efforts to deploy teams to those island provinces in order to address the low turnout,” Uy said.
News of the decision to extend the April 26 registration deadline was first shared with media on Tuesday morning by Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, who also warned of social media unavailability for SIM card users who will fail to register during the extension period.
“There’s a 90-day extension, but most of the services that come with the cellphones that are registered will be cut off with the telcos. So there will be social media unavailability for those who do not register in the next 90 days,” Remulla said.
Remulla’s announcement came as the Supreme Court raffled off the petition filed by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and several other individuals seeking to declare as unconstitutional Republic Act No. 11934 also known as the SIM Registration Act.
The petitioners argued that the law should be struck down for violating the basic constitutional rights of SIM card users such as freedom of speech, right against unreasonable searches and seizures and right to privacy of communication.
The Court was also asked to order public telecommunication entities (PTEs) to cease and desist from using, storing, transferring, and processing all information gathered into the SIM register and to destroy data already gathered.