Despite media reports that said Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry had limited use of Mobile SIMS to 5 per person an official from country’s telecom regulator said that the rule has only restricted a person to have 5 SIMS per mobile operator in the country.
There are currently 5 mobile operators named Dialog, Mobitel, Etisalat, Airtel and Hutch operating in South Asian island nation having nearly 60% of 21 million population using mobile phones. Sri Lanka is said to be the one of the countries that were offering cheapest mobile tariffs in Asia.
“This means that each person can have 5 SIMS from any operator allowing them to have 25 SIMS per person as there is currently 5 operators in the country” said Telecommunication Regulatory Communication (TRC) Chief Anusha Palpita speaking to Asian Tribune.
He clarified that there are no immediate plans to ban individuals from owning more than five mobile-phone SIM cards, while many were in argue that it was reported earlier that according to a Defense Ministry order that each person in the country is only allowed to have only five SIM cards.
However Defense Ministry had issued a fresh notice earlier in October directing every telecom operator to register their subscribers to prove ownership of their respective SIM cards.
Thus all SIM cards which are not registered by December 31st 2010 would be terminated according to reports.
Under this set up, Sri Lanka will tighten mobile phone regulations by forcing service providers to maintain full details of phone users.
