The Hindu Business Line : Cell cos switch off over 1.5 m subscribers

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New Delhi Feb. 23 Stringent verification norms set by the Government has forced the cellular operators to pull the plug off more than 1.5 million pre-paid card subscribers over the last few months. As per the status report submitted by the cellular operators to Department of Telecom, identity of nearly 80 per cent of the 84 million pre-paid mobile users have been re-verified by February 16 of which 1.3 million did not have the necessary papers.

The Government has asked all operators to re-verify their entire subscriber base by March 31 in order to address concerns raised by security agencies. Though the set deadline is only little more than a month away, operators said that they were confident of completing the verification for the remaining subscribers in time. DoT has set a penalty of Rs 1,000 for each subscriber that is left without being verified by the operators.

The subscriber verification was necessitated after security agencies unearthed instances where a large number of mobile connections were registered under a single name making it easy for anti-social elements and terrorists to make use of the handset to communicate.

No big impact

The disconnections, however, have not had any major impact on the overall subscriber growth because it is increasing at more than 5 million new users a month. The number of disconnected subscribers could well be over 2 million, as some of the operators, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication, Hutch and Tata Teleservices have not revealed the number of users taken off their respective networks.

Among those operators who have given their updated numbers for disconnections, Spice Telecom leads the pack with nearly 5 lakh users being taken off their network followed by BPL, which has taken out more than 3 lakh mobile users.

While BPL, HFCL, Tata Teleservices, Hutch and Idea have verified more than 90 per cent of their pre-paid card user base by February 16, Bharti has done 86 per cent. State-owned BSNL and MTNL have completed only 58 per cent and 20 per cent of their user base and could face penalty from DoT for failing to meet the deadline.

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