Fool-proof
re-verification of cellular subscribers will save telecom companies,
Universal Service and Government of Pakistan around 88 million dollars a
month or 1.05 billion dollars a year by curbing grey international
incoming traffic.
In addition the re-verification will help seizing of tons of social
crimes that are causing irreparable damage to society and the nation.
This is only possible if re-verification of entire cellular base of
the country is carried out in a fool-proof manner, and without any
leakages or flaws (probably the body responsible for development of
system will have to keep continuous eye on loopholes).
It can be biometric re-verification, where each and every cell user
will have to record his/her thumb impression to be able to use cellular
services, or any other method that should cent percent guarantee the
rightful ownership of each and every cell phone user.
As per estimates, there are around 1 billion illegal international
minutes per month landing into Pakistan compared to 500 million legal
traffic minutes per month, causing telcos a loss of around 63 million
dollars a month plus a 25 million dollar per month loss to Universal
Service Fund.
It merits mentioning here that each international incoming minute
earns the telecom operators USD 0.0625 while another USD 0.029 is saved
for Universal Service Fund.
Clearly a lot of revenue for government can also be saved through taxing this income.
It is no secret that entire illegal international telephony is routed
through illegal and unregistered SIMs, which will become impossible if
each and every SIM is tied with a human being through a bio-metric
re-verification.
That is, once all the SIMs are registered to recognizable and
traceable owners, there won’t be a way to route international incoming
voice traffic to local networks.
Not only this, countless number of social crimes such as wrong and
anonymous calls, SPAM messages, spreading scandals via MMS and fake
rumours via SMS, fake lotteries, phone thefts, extortion, kidnapping and
various other usual and unusual crimes will be harder to commit or
tracking them will require only a single click.
If you imagine each and every crime mentioned in above line has
become nuisance for our society. Consider how wonderful it could be to
get rid of these.
Importantly, if you notice, I didn’t mention terrorism; that’s
because terrorists will switch their communication channels to avoid
identity. They may start using Viber, Whatsapp or maybe their in-house –
self developed — apps for communication.
Our government and law enforcement agencies will have to figure out
other ways to tackle terrorism instead of blaming the telecom industry.
But yes, re-verification is necessary to avoid so many other mis-deeds
of our society.
P.S. In addition to re-verification of cellular users, Vfone,
worldcall and all other wireless operators should also re-verify their
customers to attain up-mentioned results.