The AfricaCom 2012 team are delighted to welcome Channel IT at the event and as a guest blogger – see below for their thoughts on SIM Registration Focus in Africa
Governments
and Telecom Regulators globally are focussing now on ensuring that all their
mobile network users (both pre- and post-paid) are registered with the network
in question. Their main reason for driving this program is an attempt to cut down on criminal activities and threats to end
users within the country itself.
Some African
markets already have well established programs (since 2009 in South Africa’s
case) but in other countries this is still a new or even pending initiative.
Despite Operator’s acknowledging the need for such undertakings there is often
concern about the impact this will have on subscriber numbers or revenues (when
these are already low in some cases). In one Sub-Saharan network, for example,
the number of users fell by 1.4 million after the legislation was introduced. In
addition the Operator carries the cost of these activities, which can be time
consuming and involve a great deal of paperwork and bureaucracy.
In
reality the statistics will show that subscribers that are lost are in many
cases “zero” ARPU subscribers. How often have you had a prepaid SIM card expire
on you for non-use? Subscriber numbers are also inflated in many instances to
begin with. In reality there is little evidence to support these concerns and
the downward trend does not last. Whatever the numbers reflect the reality is
that Operators will have to go through the SIM registration exercise at some
point in the near future, it’s almost inevitable.
We at
Channel IT have developed our own Biometric & Data Capture System which
captures demographic information, a user photograph, a fingerprint biometric
and a copy of a valid ID card (as per the Operator’s requirements) in both
offline and online mode. The system is portable, secure and robust, and has
already achieved great success in Nigeria where 38 million users have been
successfully and easily registered.
Visit
the Channel IT Group stand at
AfricaCom (A16a) in Cape Town between the 13th and 15th
November 2012 and allow us to demonstrate our system to you.
(Stats
source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201105130900.html)
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