What is Sanchar Saathi?
A citizen-centric portal allows citizens to
check the connections registered against their names
block mobile phones which are stolen or lost
report fraudulent or unrequired connections
verify the genuineness of a device (before a purchase) using the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity).
Sanchar Saathi has, till date, analysed 114 crore active mobile connections.
Of these, 66 lakh connections were flagged as suspicious, and 52 lakh connections were disconnected because they failed re-verification.
Other than this, 66,000 WhatsApp accounts have been blocked and eight lakh bank/wallet accounts were frozen.
Furthermore, as per the Department of Telecommunication, more than 300 FIRs have been filed against more than 1,700 dealers.
What is the reform on PoS?
From now on, it will be mandatory for franchisee, agents and distributors of SIM cards — all point of sale (PoS) — to be registered with the licensees or the telecom network operator.
The onus would be on the operator to carry out an “indisputable” verification of the PoS.
Police verification (of the dealer) is mandatory.
Existing SIM card providers have been given 12 months to comply with the registration requirements.
If the PoS is found to be involved in any illegal activity, the agreement would be terminated with the entity being blacklisted for three years.
It would also draw a penalty of ₹10 lakh.
The Department of Telecommunication holds that these provisions would help in “identifying, blacklisting and eliminating rogue PoS, from the licensees’ system and provide and encouragement to the upright PoS.”
What about bulk SIM cards?
Broadly, the latest provisions would replace the system of ‘bulk procurement’ of SIM cards (by businesses, corporates or those meant for specific events) with a system of entailing ‘business’ connections — sizeable procurement by a registered business entity or enterprise.
It was observed that 20% of bulk-procured SIMs were misused.
In the guise of bulk connections, a lot of SIMs would be procured and then they would make automated calls using a SIM-box.
Another mechanism entailed using a certain number of SIMs from the bulk procurement to make a certain number of calls, destroying them and then using another batch.
The latest reforms would endeavour to address these issues.
The new norms maintain that though businesses can procure any number of connections, it would be subject to completing KYC requirements for all end-users.
In other words, the final user— the executive who would be holding the connection — would have to undergo the KYC procedure.
In order to prevent the misuse of printed Aadhaar, the provisions mandate that demographic details would be required by scanning the QR code of the printed Aadhaar.
Subscribers would also have to undergo the entire KYC procedure for replacing their SIM; for a period of 24 hours, all outgoing and incoming SMS facilities would be barred.
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