KARACHI, Oct 26: Police authorities claim to have found more than 100,000 unregistered cellphone connections, which they believe can be used in criminal activities, raising questions over the mobile phone companies’ recently-concluded campaign to block more than 10 million SIMs (subscriber identity modules) with unverified data.

Recently-compiled data gathered by the police intelligence sources has been presented in the form of a report before the high-ups at the Central Police Office (CPO), who have decided to take up the matter with the federal interior authorities, as the relations between the cellular companies and the Karachi police seem to be under strain and are likely to go from bad to worse.

A senior official confirmed that the report was prepared through studies in different parts of the city and the hurdles faced during investigating criminal cases have helped law-enforcers arrive at the conclusion that there were a large number of such unregistered cellphone connections, which might be in the use of criminals.

“We believe that the SIMs blocked by the companies were mainly abandoned and were not in use for the last several months or year,” Wasim Ahmed, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) told Dawn, while confirming the recently-compiled report. “We consider this exercise [blocking of unregistered SIMs] as eyewash to satisfy the federal authorities, telecoms regulator and the law-enforcement agencies.”

The senate’s standing committee on interior, in the first half of this year, came up with directives for registration of all cellular subscribers across the country, believing that more than seven million unregistered cellphone subscribers was a threat to the country’s security.

After consultation with cellular companies and the telecoms regulator, the committee had set May 22 as a deadline to block unregistered SIMs, which was, however, not met.

Since then the committee has extended the deadline twice with July 31 as the last date for the cellular companies to complete the registration process.

However, earlier this month the PTA, on behalf of all five mobile phone companies, announced it had blocked 10.5 million connections. In the first phase, it said, connections sold up till April 30, 2008 had been verified through the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra).

“More than 7.3 million connections found unverified have been blocked. In the second phase, the PTA is endeavouring to clean subscriber’s data of connections sold from May 1, 2008 to May 30, 2008. Up till now a total of 0.6 million connections which remained unverified have been blocked,” said the PTA announcement.

Claims and counter-claims

Though the authorities’ claim, backed by cellular companies, appears unsatisfactory for the law enforcers, the mobile phone service providers have reacted strongly to comments from the city police chief, alleging that the police authorities have shifted responsibility of their ‘inefficiency and incapability’ to the cellular service providers. However, officials of these companies avoided going on the record.

“This is not the way to respond to our effort,” said an official of a cellular company, which is among the top three service providers in terms of subscriber base. “It’s an ongoing process and it may take time streamlining things in accordance with the desire of the police. But they (police) should realise that we can only facilitate in achieving their desired results and the main job and responsibility lies with the investigators. But, sorry to say, it never happens.”

He played down the Karachi police’s allegations saying that the companies had not received such feedback from any other part of the country and the service providers would react strongly if they received further negative comments.

“This is not ‘eyewash,’ as there has been a series of steps taken mainly at the retail level and the companies have put their maximum efforts to plug the holes. But, we recognise the fact that it can’t be turned into an ideal situation in such a short time,” he added.

A phenomenal jump in the number of cellular phone subscribers has been witnessed since 2004, when two foreign cellular service providers launched their operations in the country. It triggered a competition which led to the increase in the number mobile phone users to more than 90 million across the country by September 2008.

The PTA data shows that Mobilink leads the market share with nearly 31.35 million subscribers across the country, followed by Ufone with 18.8 million users.

The Norwegian company Telenor enjoys a total of 18.47 million subscribers, while 16.15 million people use the service of the UAE’s Warid. China Mobile’s Zong attracted some 5.09 million subscribers by June 2008, says the PTA data.