The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) advised the public to be wary of individuals who might be “taking advantage of technically and computer illiterate persons” by offering free or paid assistance for the mandatory Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card registration.
In an advisory, the commission reiterated that they are “not recommending” the utilization of registration assistance offers made by private individuals, may it be paid or free. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) also supported this plea, asking registrants to call the designated registration hotline 1326 instead.
10.97% out of nearly 170M SIM users
Based on NTC’s latest update issued on Friday, Jan. 13, more than 18 million subscribers in the Philippines have so far registered their SIMs.
Smart Communications Inc. still has the highest number of registrants — 8,920,898 as of Jan. 12. This is equivalent to 13.12 percent of its 67,996,734 existing subscribers. This was followed by Globe Telecom with 7,996,797 and Dito Telecommunity with 1,613,528 registrants so far.
Total number of registrants in the country is 18,531,223 or 10.97 percent of the nearly 170 million users in the country.