How to punish businesses that release junk SIM cards to the market?

Forced to stop developing new subscribers if the business violates

Recently, the Ministry of Information and Communications has been constantly stepping up tightening measures to prevent the problem of junk SIMs in the market. In March 2024, the Ministry's leaders chaired a meeting on handling junk SIMs, clearly stating that the management belongs to telecommunications enterprises, the State manages through inspection, examination and handling if violations are detected.

Network operators may be forced to stop developing new subscribers if they leave junk SIMs on the market.

The Ministry's leaders require businesses to change the status of SIMs with subscriber information and packages that are locked in two directions to SIMs without subscriber information before March 22. Before April 15, SIMs that are locked in one direction and have signs of pre-activation must also be changed to SIMs without subscriber information, and at the same time, the group of mobile subscribers with one document but the name of the owner of multiple SIMs (from 4 SIMs or more) must be completely handled.

After that time, from April 16, mobile telecommunications enterprises will be responsible if new SIMs that are not in compliance with regulations still appear and circulate on the market. The Ministry Inspectorate is responsible for checking and handling violations. The highest level of punishment that can be applied is to request the suspension of new subscriber development for violating network operators. At the same time, the Ministry will issue a document reminding the head of the enterprise as well as reporting to the Prime Minister for consideration of disciplinary action.

Fined 420 million VND for 3 network operators to survive spam calls

The Ministry of Information and Communications recently announced the results of an inspection on compliance with regulations against spam calls at telecommunications enterprises. Accordingly, three telecommunications enterprises, including Viettel, CMC Telecom, and FPT Telecom, were proposed to be fined 140 million VND each for not thoroughly preventing calls that bother users.

Specifically, the three above networks all complied with regulations, applied technical measures to identify and prevent spam calls to subscribers who refused to receive advertisements, but this situation still occurred. Of which, Viettel had 1,165 calls using the identifier name to call 921 subscribers registered in the list of not receiving advertisements, CMC Telecom had 63,390 advertising calls to 41,917 subscribers, FPT Telecom had 526,159 advertising calls to 137,125 subscribers.

In addition to the fines imposed on the three carriers, the Telecommunications Department also proposed suspending service provision for two months for violating subscribers.

Junk SIM cards were once sold widely and openly on the market.

As for VNPT, the company allowed 1,239 spam and advertising calls to 626 subscribers, but according to the company's explanation, limitations in PSTN technology made it impossible to prevent spam calls from landline subscribers to subscribers who registered to refuse to receive advertising. Therefore, the management agency did not impose an administrative penalty but requested the company to quickly complete the system and overcome current shortcomings and limitations.

Subscriber information checker tool

As mentioned above, there is still a situation where a personal document is used to own more than 4 mobile phone numbers, even though in some cases the owner does not know about the existence of those phone numbers. Using documents to illegally register subscribers also contributes to the increase in the number of junk SIM cards on the market.

According to the leader of the Telecommunications Department, the Ministry of Information and Communications has developed a tool to help users proactively look up the number of SIM cards they own. Mobile phone owners can text with the syntax TTTB [space] CCCD Number and send it to the switchboard 1414 and wait for the results to be returned from the system. The switchboard and syntax apply to all networks, completely free of charge.

Statistics show that users have become familiar with this lookup method when network operators receive more than 6 million text messages to the switchboard with CCCD information for lookup. To date, about 1,200 subscriber owners have reported to the network operators about the appearance of "strange SIMs" registered on their personal documents. This helps telecommunications enterprises eliminate subscribers with incorrect information, and implement one-way and two-way blocking for these phone numbers.

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