Buying prepaid lines now needs ID, residence proof

Unidentified users should register in six months

The selling of prepaid mobile phone lines shall from now on require the approval of the corresponding mobile operator. The ‘electronic prepaid mobile lines activation’ is a new procedure recently launched by the Ministry of Telecommunications (MoT). It aims at identifying the line’s owner. “The purchased line will not be activated until the personal data of the buyer is reported to the mobile operator,” said Nadim Khater, chief commercial officer at Touch.

Prepaid lines make up around 80 percent of the whole subscribers’ base, and there is a lack of sufficient information about them. Unlike postpaid lines, prepaid lines are sold at points of sale (POS) and are currently immediately activated once they are inserted in a handset.

The electronic activation system will require the 700 authorized points of sale to request the necessary information from potential buyers. Any person who wants to buy a prepaid line will have to present a copy of his ID and a residence certificate to the point of sale, said Talal Assaf, consultant at the MoT. A photo of the person taken on the spot will be included to the file too.

The data will be referred to the corresponding operating company, Alfa or Touch, online. The company will review the data sent and, if it finds it sufficient, it will immediately send an online confirmation authorizing the POS to sell the line. “The whole process won’t take more than five minutes,” said Assaf.

Khater said that Touch created a new hotline and helpdesk just to reply to the online confirmation requests sent from the network of authorized dealers and points of sales.

Khater said Touch adopted a two-phase plan to apply the new system. First, they banned any sale of a new Touch line without the appropriate documentation. The second phase deals with the prepaid lines already in-use and whose owners have not been documented. “We are currently studying the appropriate method to deal with these lines,” he said.

Within a maximum period of six months, all owners of prepaid lines who have not reported their personal data should deliver the required documents to their mobile line operators. Subscribers who fail to comply with the new rules will have their lines deactivated.