The re-registration of SIMs using biometric details is going to be completed on Tuesday night. Deactivation of biometrically unverified SIMs will start from Wednesday.
But, subscribers can activate deactivated SIM instantly after completing its re-registration using the method, said officials of telecom regulator.
Meanwhile, BTRC issued a new directive that said subscriber will get 450 days time from the day of deactivation to activate their SIM. Later, the operator would issue advertisement to resell the SIM and within 90 days after the advertisement, the subscriber could activate the SIM on the basis of re-registration.
After completion of 540 days, operator could resell the SIM as new connection, added the directive.
“The deactivation process will start from the zero hour of Wednesday, but we have kept option for the subscriber to activate their SIM instantly after re-registration," said BTRC Spokesperson and Secretary Sarwar Alam on Tuesday.
According to the last statistics of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), a total of 10,48,65,306 SIMs were verified till now.
BTRC officials, however, said on Tuesday over 4 million SIMs were verified biometrically which will tally the total number to near 110 million.
As per the figure of telecom regulator, country has now 131.9 million mobile phone subscribers. So, deactivation of nearly 25 million SIMs will be started from tomorrow.
Of the total verified SIMs, market leader Grameenphone belongs to 4,90,15,896 SIMs while share of Banglalink 2,66,46,476 SIMs, Robi 2,10,04,322 SIMs, Airtel 76,80,651 SIMs, state-owned Teletalk 12,74,252 SIMs and lone CDMA operator Citycell 1,43,709 RIM cards.
Earlier, the BTRC gave a directive that unregistered SIMs would be blocked after May 31, and mobile operators could re-sell them to anyone.
The government launched biometric SIM card registration on December 16 last year and later, deadline was extended by one month after April 30.
State minister for Posts and Telecommunication Tarana Halim claimed the move will help decrease criminal activities drastically by using SIM cards in the country, according to BSS. –RH [Read More]

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Source: The Financial Express