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Lemak Lemang

A walk down the Yellow Brick Road of Malaysia's Corridor of the future

by Jeff Ooi, Malaysia

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December 29: The "drop dead" deadline for prepaid users to register

Nov 23, 2006 13:37

The Government looks firm in implementing the December 15 deadline for all prepaid mobile users to be registered, and the users are responding well. As of November 22, there are now over 12.1 million users who have complied by getting their prepaid numbers registered, said Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), the industry regulator.

The total number of prepaid users in Malaysia is estimated to have exceeded 17 million.

To emphasize its point, MCMC issued a belated, final guideline on the registration process on November 15, exactly one month from the registration timeline although the exercise has been ongoing since early this year.

The new guidelines replace the one issued on June 6, 2006.

According to the guidelines, cellular network operators have been allowed to execute the registration process either manually, via the chip-based identity card (MyKad), or via approved online platforms.

The minimum information to be collected during the registration process are the name, address and identification number and any other data as may be required by the Commission. It has also been stated clearly that the data retrieved for this purpose shall not be used for marketing or any other activities.

The network operators have also made the undertaking that they will ensure the information collected from the end-users is kept secure, confidential and not exposed to tampering.

As prepaid users include foreigners residing and working in Malaysia, instruction has been given that the end-users' data shall be duly captured at the point of signing up and archived in the operators' prepaid public cellular service end-users' database within 21 days upon registration.

To smoothen the registration process, there will be no obligation on the part of the network operators, and their representatives and resellers, to photocopy identification documents of end-users, including foreigners, during the registration period.

Beyond the December 15 timeline, all unregistered prepaid users will be given an additional 14 days to comply, while their lines will be suspended for all outgoing calls and SMS messages during this additional 14-day period.

If the prepaid users subsequently fail to register within the 14-day grace period, their lines will deactivated permanently. Hence, the drop-dead deadline for compliance is December 29, 2006.

Parents must also take note. Network operators are not allowed to register users who are below the age of 12, the qualifying age for having a national identity card.

Now for the unasked question: Why the need to register prepaid users? Preventing terrorist abuse? 9/11 was some five years ago.

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About Jeff Ooi

Jeff Ooi is an Internet and e-Business consultant based in Kuala Lumpur who's spent the last four years blogging internationally on the tech scene, on anything and nothing. Which doesn't really explain why most of his own technology is about three years out of date. He doesn't even own a PDA after his Palm V crashed. He's on 3G, though... Lemak Lemang refers to coconut-flavored sticky rice stuffed in a bamboo container.