Zambia to de-register half a million mobile sim cards to fight cybercrime
Amid rise in swindlers using mobile phones, telecommunications authority announces measures to curb cybercrime
Zambia’s Information and Communications Technology Authority on Wednesday announced an initiative to de-register over half a million mobile sim cards nationwide in an effort to curb cybercrime.
The body’s acting Director-General Mwenya Mutale said de-registrations started after the end of a seven-day ultimatum for subscribers to regularize their details.
It is illegal for any person to own more than 10 sim cards without justification
Mutale’s office said in a statement, referring to regulations introduced in 2011 that required such subscribers to declare why they have so many sim cards.
Zambia has a mobile subscription base of over 17 million on three service providers MTN, Airtel, and the state-run Zamtel.
Russia’s Beeline Telecoms is scheduled to become the country’s fourth provider by June.
The sector has recently witnessed a rise in criminal scammers deceiving people, such as via false mobile money transactions in which subscribers are falsely told to have received money or won the lottery.