Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III on Sunday slammed telecommunication companies for continuously refusing to register their pre-paid sim cards and help the government in fighting crimes, including terrorism.
“The benefits of having this kind of technology, however, does not always work for the betterment of the society because pre-paid sim cards are unregistered and untraceable, therefore, it can be used to carry out illegal activities,” Sotto said.
Under the 17th Congress, Sotto filed his previous measures pushing for sim card registration as Senate Bill No. 7.
The bill mandates all telco companies to register their pre-paid sim cards since the modern-day criminals and terrorists have been taking advantage of the mobile phone technology to launch attacks.
The Davao City night market blast, for exaample, was carried out by suspects who used a cellphone-detonated improvised explosive device.
Telco ompanies, however, have been opposing the passage of the bill which was backed by law enforcement agencies like the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Under the bill, the National Telecommunications Commission, in close coordination with the Department of Trade and Industry and telco companies, shall formulate the necessary guidelines for the proper implementation of the pre-paid sim card registration process.
The bill also states that all mobile phone service providers shall require ownership registration as prerequisite to selling pre-paid sim cards.
The use of pre-paid sim cards in this country has flourished as these can be purchased practically anywhere by anybody without any required identification and credit background restrictions.
In the Philippines, the subscriber base of pre-paid sim cards grows dramatically each year, reaching an estimated number of almost 100 million, or about 90 percent of the entire cellular phone service market.
Sotto said his bill primarily intends to be an effective remedial measure to mandate cellular service providers to require the registration of all prepaid cellphone subscribers by asking valid ID at purchase, and in turn start build databases and come up with profiles of these buyers in the same way police detectives profile criminal suspects.