In spite of the steady progress being made to have its cell phone customers register their SIM cards, the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company (GT&T) will most likely have to extend the deadline for completing this process, its Director of Rate Marketing Gene Evelyn said.
According to Evelyn, ever since beginning the registration process in late October, the turnout by the customers has been good. However, he was unable to confirm how many of GT&T’s 280,000 customers have so far completed the process. The company has been urging customers to go into its offices and register. Additionally, as part of its efforts to ensure the smooth flow of the process, GT&T dispatched special teams to outlying areas to help customers with the registration.
But despite these efforts, Evelyn said it would be unrealistic for the company to have all the required information for its customers logged by next Friday, which is the deadline set by the government.
The company’s ongoing initiative is an attempt to adhere to the Telecom-munications Law which was amended last year. The law requires providers of SIM cards and cellular phones to establish at their own cost, a system for recording and storing particulars of SIM cards and mobile cellular phones and the customers utilizing them. The law says that the service provider will have to record information relating to the details of transactions of persons calling and persons receiving calls and the time and duration of calls. After the piece of legislation was assented to, the service provider was given a year to log and store the required information.
Evelyn said that it was only at the end of October that the company started “in earnest” to get its subscribers to register their SIM cards. According to him, in the months leading up to October the company was working on fulfilling other requirements of the law. He said this included coming up with a format approved by the government for the collection of this data.
Throughout this time, Evelyn said, he has been in regular contact with Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon and Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee updating them with the company’s progress.
Evelyn disclosed that while no official extension has been given as yet, the company would be able to complete the process within six months. He gave this assurance based on what he described as “the really good support” that customers have demonstrated so far.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News understands that the legislation in question does not significantly affect the current operations of Digicel.
Digicel’s Public Relations Represen-tative Alex Graham said that when the company began its operations here, it recorded such information from its customers.
The Telecommunications (Amend-ment) Bill 2008 was taken to the National Assembly last year, after it was observed that mobile phones were frequently used to facilitate planning and commission of serious crimes. It was also noted that there had been a spate of thefts of mobile devices by unscrupulous persons.
The passage of this bill is expected to help the police significantly in their crime investigations.
