The National Telecommunications Commission has claimed a significant drop in complaints related to text scams, attributing the development to the enactment of the SIM Card Registration Act.

“This is the first law signed by the President and the NTC immediately noticed that since this law was implemented, from 1,500 complaints about text scams, it immediately dropped to 100 complaints a day, and we are not yet at the deadline of 26 April,” NTC legal branch officer-in-charge Andres Castelar Jr. said.

Castelar recently led an information drive for senior citizens in the cities of Malabon and Caloocan about the key features of Republic Act 11934, or the SIM Registration Act.

“The telecom providers are the custodians of the SIM Register and the law provides harsh penalties for intentional disclosures of SIM registration data or breaches caused by negligence,” Castelar said.
He assured the seniors of Malabon and Caloocan in attendance that their personal information is protected by the law.

Following the release of the implementing rules and regulations for the SIM Card Registration Act earlier this month, telecommunications subscribers are now required to register their SIMs, or else their cards will be immediately deactivated.

The NTC released the IRR of the law, which stated that telco operators or public telecommunications entities who refuse to register a subscriber’s SIM without a valid reason will face a fine of up to P1 million.

The NTC has been holding an information campaign drive about SIM registration to complement the ongoing facilitation of SIM Registration in Remote Areas nationwide.

To date, 222 remote areas in the country have been visited by NTC’s Facilitated SIM Registration caravan.

As of 9 March, the public telecommunications entities reported 42.7 million successful SIM registrations representing 25.24 percent of the total 168 million active SIM subscribers.

Last week, the Department of Information and Communications Technology said it might extend the SIM registration deadline beyond April.