THE National Telecommunications Commission in Davao Region (NTC-Davao) intensified its campaign to encourage Dabawenyos to register their sim cards following the Sim Registration Act in the country.

“Meron tayong mga booths sa mga malls, may naglagay ng registration area doon, especially sa labas ng sinehan kasi may mga senior citizens doon na nag-request (We have booths inside the malls and they put a registration area there as requested by our senior citizens),” Rolando Sampaga, Chief - Enforcement and Operations Division NTC-Davao, said in a press conference at the University of Mindanao, Matina-Campus, Davao City on June 2, 2023.

He said the telecommunication companies immediately addressed this request from the senior citizens.

“Kasi libre sila ng sine, and gusto nila pagbaba nila magpaparehistro sila (Since they are enjoying free tickets for cinemas they wanted an area that is very accessible for them to register after they watch movies),” he added.

Sampaga said even at school, the information and communications technology (ICT) staff were also assisting students who were having a hard time registering their sim cards.

As of May 31, 2023, since the sim card registration extension, about 97,826,871 million subscribers were already registered – at least 58.22 percent of the total telecommunication users in the country.

NTC said the Dito Telecommunity has 14,964,967 subscribers as of December 2022 and at least 6,635,571 have already registered or 44.34 percent.

Globe now has a total of 44,920,849 registered subscribers or 51.78 percent out of 86,746,672 subscribers in the country.

Meanwhile, Smart has a total of 66,304,761 subscribers in the country with 46,270,451 registered subscribers or 69.78 percent.

The sim card registration has been extended by the government for an additional of 90 days, or until the final week of July. It was initially supposed to end on April 28, 2023.