Dubai: The third phase of SIM card re-registration ended on Tuesday and there was a mad rush at all the point of sales of etisalat, du and shopping centres.
Mandated by the UAE Telecom Regulatory Authority, re-registration will ultimately protect subscribers from misuse or confidentiality infringement.
Subscribers who have re-registered their SIM cards after getting an SMS notification within the due date will be prevented from disconnection of lines.
Those failing to submit their details will have outgoing calls blocked, but will receive incoming calls during the grace period.
The TRA has advised mobile subscribers to abide by the regulation and update their personal details through etisalat and du.
Etisalat and du did not respond to Gulf News queries, but du said that they will issue a press release late on Tuesday.
Mohammed Osman from Egypt said that he has been waiting in the queue for the past three hours at Dubai Mall.
“I came here at 8.30am and there is only three staff at the counter. They should have had more staff to complete the procedures fast. I don’t think all the people waiting in the queue will be able to complete it,” Osman said.
When asked why he had to wait for the last day, Osman said that he was on vacation and he had to extend his leave due to a personal problem.
An etisalat staff said at the counter said that the last two days have been hectic. Queues were growing late into the evenings. We expect the same today [Tuesday] also.
A new batch of the re-registration process will begin soon.
According to the TRA, etisalat has just over seven million mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2012 while Du had more than 6.5 million. The total number of mobile phone users in the UAE stood at 13.77 million last year.
TRA has given a timeframe of 18 months for subscribers to reregister their SIM cards under its ‘My Number, My Identity’ programme.
The process is divided into six stages to ensure that all of the users have successfully completed their registration during the timeframe.
All the mobile phone subscribers in the UAE should be registered by end of the year. After that, registered owners of the SIMs will have to bear any consequences for the misuse of the SIM cards issued in their names.
