Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ( PTA ) has announced that now no cellular sim will be activated without biometric verification in Karachi and Balochistan after 1st April 2014.
Move is aimed at curbing unregistered or unverified SIMs in Pakistan , as more than 80% of them are used by criminal or terrorist activities in Pakistan. As PTA says , the customer has to show his/her CNIC to the cellular company representative and then customer has to record the thumb impression which will be matched with the thumb print recorded in NADRA’s Database.
If the thumb print matches successfully, the SIM will be issued to the customer. This way, no one can purchase a SIM on fake CNIC or on the one belonging to someone else.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ( PTA ) published an ad on major newspapers shown below.
For complete elimination of all unverified SIMs, Cellular operators will have to verify all the operating SIMs biometric verification and for this reason, customers of all cellular operators will be requested to come to the franchise and verify their SIMs again through the biometric verification system.
