ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has said that the three or more unverified SIMs registered on one user’s CNIC (computerised national identity cards) are going to be blocked from today (Friday).
The deadline to complete process for biometric verification for total 103 million SIMs has been extended to April 13. So far more than 72 million SIMs against 46 million CNICs have been verified while the authority has blocked around 10 million disowned SIMs.
The government in collaboration with the telecom operators had launched biometric verification of SIMs as a step to curb terrorism in the country.
According to the PTA, the telecom operators’ retail points will not issue new prepaid SIMs till the biometric verification of the old prepaid connections by April 13. At present, there are about 60,000 retail centres and 1,500 customer service centres and franchises of the five operators across the country.