Australia and Switzerland have completed it. Thailand, Philippines,Taiwan and Singapore have started it. Indonesia initiated the process last month. Authorities in Malaysia, reflecting the public "last minute rush" mentality, hope to have all prepaid cellular phone subscribers registered by June this year. "Why the non urgency?" asked my kaki from the Warong Kopi. "Isn't this a matter of national interest? Shouldn't this have been done sooner and not later? Wasn't it reported that the registration of pre paid users supposed to start on the 1st of January 2006?".
True words spoken by my "Teh-Si kaki". However national interest are at times overshadowed by commercial interest. Prepaid cellular phones are estimated to be about 83% of the total cellular phone usage in Malaysia. A very major problem is the financial cost of introducing this electronic data collecting system and no party will want to be burderned by it. Maybe, until an explosive device is remotely triggered off by a celluar phone then only, we may begin the registration exercise.
Link : The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Nothing is as easy as it seems. Just ask cell phone companies and their prepaid subscribers about the new compulsory customer registration process."I have tried sending SMSs to the 4444 (number) since the (registration) announcement," PT Telkomsel prepaid user Arie G. Desyanto said, referring to the special number for SMS registration.
"They did reply at first, but the system failed whenever I tried to send my data," the 33-year-old added.
"I guess since too many people wanted to register, the system might be overloaded."
Arie is one of millions of users having problems complying with a new government ruling requiring all prepaid cellular subscribers to register themselves by April 28 at the latest.
As of Tuesday, only 4 percent or 1.4 million of some 35 million prepaid subscribers had finished registering.
The ministry and cellular operators launched the public "4444" campaign last month to mark the start of the registration process.
The registration will allow security agencies to monitor and respond to the increasing cases of text-messaging fraud, and monitor terrorists' SMS transmissions.
However, overloading and typing errors have caused hassles for the cell phone companies using the 4444 number.
PT Excelcomindo Pratama corporate communications head Ventura Elisawati said human error had meant the company had so far registered only 470,000 out of 7 million prepaid subscribers.
Telkomsel, meanwhile, has registered even less, around 700,000 out of their total 22 million prepaid subscribers, plus some 3 million more who had voluntarily registered since 2003.
"We already have the system, all we have to do is add to the capacity of our server" Telkomsel public relations manager Suryo Hadiyanto said.....
After registrations, next comes the complicated process of validating the registered data with the government.
But will this ever happen? Neither the companies nor the government want to shoulder this costly, resource-hungry job....
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