Register your SimCards soon says TCRA

A spokesman for the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority called on users to register all SimCards by 30, January 2023.

Sadath Kalolo, Head of Tele-Traffic Management at TCRA’s telecommunications and internet services made the call in Dar es Salaam yesterday when speaking in one of the televised programmes

Kalolo stressed that, the exercise of verifying mobile phone lines aims to help citizens, especially users of telecommunications and internet services to be safe whenever they use communication services.

“When you verify your lines, it makes you safe as compared to someone who hasn’t registered his/her simcard,” he stressed.

The official said that when someone wants to verify simcard, he/she just dial *106 (then follow the instructions given in the menu with five types of instructions—one, two, three, four and five.

According to Kalolo, in the exercise one needs to check if the line registration has been done correctly, to check if you recognize all the registered lines using your national identification number and to formalise the numbers you own by identifying the main number and additional numbers.

He added that, once the phone user finds out the presence of foreign numbers in the check menu list, he/she should delete them immediately, by contacting the Internet service provider he uses through the number 100, or visiting the service provider’s store or the agent of his Internet service provider.

He said that the simcard verification started in December this year and will continue until January 30, 2023, stressing that once the awareness campaign is completed, simcard users whose phone numbers have not been verified will be closed as per law that requires every user of telecommunication services should register his/her line through biometrics.

Regarding users who were registered with other people’s identifications for various reasons including not meeting the age criteria or missing a citizenship ID number, and thus being registered by parents, guardians, siblings, relatives and friends, TCRA directed them to make sure they get a citizenship ID number from National Identification Authority (NIDA) and register those lines with their identities because registering someone else is a crime except for a user under 18 years of age.

The authority also emphasized that young people who have already reached the age of 18 and registered their mobile phone lines with their parents or guardians should also renew the registration by obtaining the citizenship identification number, then renew the registration using the identification number.