SIM card user registration begins in Bankok

BANGKOK: -- Mobile phone shops at IT Mall in Bangkok, one of the capital's biggest outlets, have reported a smooth start to a new government scheme to identify and register all purchasers of prepaid SIM cards.

Shop owners said customers were cooperating by presenting their identity cards as required when buying new SIM cards.

The new scheme, which began officially today, aims to create a client data base.

The government has said the measure will help curb insurgent violence in the country's three southern border provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, where bombers have used such communication devices to detonate explosives.

IT Mall shop owners said they had already been collecting client data for several days, ahead of the official start of the scheme, even though the government had not yet provided the official forms.

Thailand has 30,000 SIM card outlets across the country with a total sales of 50,000 cards a day.

Shop owners believed the move would not affect sales.

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), which is responsible for the new registration scheme, yesterday signed a cooperation agreement with seven cell phone service providers to register their prepaid SIM card users.

''The measure is part of the government's attempt to quell the unrest in the deep South and I believe it will not affect the service,'' ICT Minister Suwit Khunkitti said.

He said the data base being created would be treated as confidential information.

The ministry, he said, would begin regulating 21.5 million SIM cards purchased earlier by the end of this month.

''Users must report to police or to their service provider if they have lost their phone or transferred their SIM cards to other users to prevent any misuse,'' he said, adding that official forms would be distributed to SIM card shops within days.