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Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Registration ‘to help stop phone thefts’
President Arroyo’s support will speed up the implementation of the plan to register cellular phones and their subscriber’s identification module (SIM), said Director Danilo Sy of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) 7.
In the past years, President Arroyo never intervened on the proposal to register cellphones.
But because of several deaths from cellphone robberies, she created a task force headed by Deputy National Security Adviser Virtus Gil to coordinate with NTC in drafting plans to stop mobile phone theft and robbery and illegal re-sale.
Gil reportedly presented a proposal to establish a Cellular Phone Registration System that will authorize NTC to trace stolen phones.
Registration will be an effective tool to trace users of stolen pre-paid and post-paid units. This will minimize, if not eradicate, theft and robbery.
Traced
Once registered, a robber using or having in his possession a stolen cellular phone can easily be traced. He could no longer buy a SIM pack to replace the existing SIM because he would have to present evidence of ownership.
Instead of the current two months, the validity of the SIM pack will also be extended to two years, Sy said.
He said the proposal to register cellular phones has been there for several years now but telecommunications companies filed a case before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Quezon City against it.
The NTC filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, which remanded the case to the RTC for trial. It is still pending.
Sy said the NTC will wait for the RTC decision, especially with questions being raised such as who will take charge of the registration.
The stand of the cellphone networks, according to Sy, is that it would be hard to maintain a database because of the huge volume of data.
Database
But for Sy, this is not an issue because cellular phone companies currently service landlines of which they also have a database.
“It is surprising why they (telephone companies) cannot maintain a database for cellular phone numbers when they are already doing it on landline numbers. Maybe they are hiding something related to taxation,” Sy said. (EOB)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 19, 2006 issue)
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