Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) has announced all SIM cards still unregistered by July 31 will be switched off and no extension will be offered.

Regis Gatarayiha, director general of RURA, said the country had already missed the deadline, despite the fact more than 5.4 million mobile phone subscribers had enough time from February this year when the exercise kicked off.

Only two million of the 5.4 million subscribers have since complied.

Rwanda has an efficient registration system which is linked to the national identification database.

This ensures that once the national Identification details of the subscriber are captured electronically, the registration is completed instantly.

“Now that we have a system that is very efficient and we have tried to explain the rationale, it shouldn’t be a problem any further,� said Gatarayiha

It is believed that with the increasing number of crimes perpetrated via mobile phones, especially related to mobile money transactions, the registration will help in curbing the crime.

“We have seen some crimes committed using mobile phones and it was important to come up with the policy due to the adoption of many applications that use a mobile phone,” Gatarayiha added.

Rwanda mobile phone operators also intend to use the registration to be able to identify customer�s physical addresses, something that will assist them in solving problems arising from particular areas.

�Accordingly, SIM Card registration was one of the targets of the East African Communication Organization (EACO) where member states were supposed to have registered SIM cards by the end of 2012,�Gatarayiha said.

If all goes as planned, Rwanda will be joining other East African countries such as Kenya who have already switched off non-registered SIM cards.