The first day of the SIM card registration on Dec. 27 was met by mostly disgruntled subscribers across all networks.
Giant telecommunication companies Smart Communications, Inc. and Globe Telecom, Inc. have admitted their SIM registration portals encountered glithces on the first day of the implementation of the SIM Card Registration Law.
George Babsa-ay, Jr., a local government employee, said the telecommunication firms could have avoided the glitches if they first held a pilot run and implemented the registration by clusters.
“They should have implemented the SIM card registration per regional cluster to avoid the problem,” he said.
Netizens turned to social media to air their frustration over the technical issues they encountered when they attempted to register their SIM cards.
A Facebook user commented registering was frustrating because the portal was down, while another said they received “null” responses after several attempts.
Others shared screenshots of notifications that stated they either exceeded the allowed number of attempts, the portal failed to respond, or there were many requests and they should try again.
While a lot were disappointed, there were those who said they were able to register, some on their first attempt and others after accessing the portals in the wee hours.
Postpaid subscribers did not encounter problems with their registration as they were only asked to send their confirmation to the number sent to them by their service network providers.
Other cool-headed subscribers said they did not join the first-day rush of the SIM card registration, saying subscribers have 180 days to complete the transaction pursuant to the law.
The telecommunication companies have issued statements asking their subscribers to be patient because of the huge volume of people wanting to access their portals.
Smart Communications, Inc. said as of 2 p.m. of Dec. 29, 2022, a total of 2,383,689 prepaid, Smart Bro, and TNT customers and 250,154 Smart postpaid customers, or a total of 2.6 million subscribers had registered their SIMs on the Smart network.
It earlier said in a release it has received close to 400,000 applications since SIM card registration started on Dec. 27.
The company said 244,840 Smart prepaid, Smart Bro, and TNT users and 143,682 Smart postpaid subscribers, or a total of 388,522 subscribers, have complete their SIM registration on the first day.
Globe, meanwhile, said it has logged over 1.5 million SIM registrations as of Dec. 28, hours after the platform went back online after fine-tuning and optimization for better customer experience.
“As of 4 p.m. of Dec. 28, 2022, a total of 1,528,735 Globe and TM SIM users have completed their registration,” the company said in a statement. – Jane B. Cadalig
April 20, 2024
