SIM Registration: Subscribers Berate MTN Exercise

Subscribers in Port
Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, have berated the management of the Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN) over what they described as rigorous Subscriber Indentity Module (SIM) registration exercise.
The subscribers who barred their minds in an interview with The Tide, Wednesday, said the process was too tasking and should be suspended.
They regretted a situation where someone would spend a whole day at a particular centre and would not be attended to.
A subscriber, Mrs Nkeiru Ede, who said she registered at a centre in Garrison, pointed out that the presence of her little child made the attendants to attend to her faster.
According to her it took over three hours to complete the process due to large crowd.
She said the exercise was ideal, but should be redesigned as to allow for easy process.
Ede noted that since part of the reasons for the exercise was security, it would not be proper suspend it, but to improve on the system.
Another subscriber, Mr Amos Ogundu, blamed the service provider over the inability to provide a software that would allow subscribers re-register their lines personally. He said if the MTN was a serious company, it should have since developed an application that would enable its customers re-connect themselves to the network in the event of theft or destruction of their existing lines. Ogundu, also noted that the N1000 free airtime offered by the company cannot equate the stress undergone before the exercise.
In her views, Okpara Onyekozu, supported the suspension of the exercise due to the level of hardship it has caused to subscribers, so far. She recalled how, two years ago, subscribers were also made to pass through same ordeal by network providers.
The Tide gathered that the exercise was a directive from the country’s telecoms regulatory body, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), to enable it check the issue of crime that has to do with the Internet and cyber space.