MANILA, Philippines — SIM card sales have dropped due to the implementation of the SIM Card Registration law, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy said on Tuesday.
“‘Yung resellers, distributors ng SIM cards, since nag-announce tayo ng ganito, bumagsak ang bentahan nila ng SIM cards dahil dati itong mga scammers, itong mga sindikato, bili nang bili ng SIM card, tapon,” Uy said in a Palace briefing.
(The sales of resellers and distributors of SIM cards ever since we announced the law have dropped because before scammers and syndicates in the past would just buy SIM cards and then just discard them.)
“Ngayon, alam nila na hindi na nila magagawa ‘yan, bumagsak ngayon ang bentahan ng SIM cards,” he added.
(Now that they know they can’t do that anymore, the sales of SIM cards dropped.)
Uy said they expected this to happen with the SIM Card Registration law, since “there will be no more demand” aside from the sale of SIM cards to foreigners traveling to the Philippines.
“In terms of the local population, the sales will be very, very small once this happens so those are the things that we are studying and anticipating and preparing for,” he said.
He added that while the DICT has no data on the losses of telecommunication firms in terms of SIM card sales, he suggested that they should no longer order cards from manufacturers and just exhaust their inventory.
Uy also said that the number of spam text messages has “significantly dropped” since the implementation of the SIM card registration law.
Over 20 million SIM cards registered
Uy said that there are already over 20 million SIM cards registered roughly one month since the start of the implementation of SIM Card Registration Act.
“We are progressing very, very fast. In order to help our remote areas, we have launched a SIM card registration caravan that will go to remote areas,” he said.
READ: Over 22.2M SIM cards registered as of Jan. 18 — NTC
Mandatory SIM card registration started on Dec. 27 last year, as mandated by Republic Act No. 11934 or the SIM Registration Act.
All mobile subscribers are required to enroll their SIM cards within 180 days or six months from the effectivity of the law or face the automatic deactivation of their cards.