The ministry will take action against the head of any network operator found to have made mistakes in this regard.

Illustrative image. (Photo: SGGP)

According to the official dispatch of the Ministry of Information and Communications to the People's Committees of the provinces and municipalities, the activity of buying and selling "junk SIM cards" - SIM cards that are registered with one person's personal information but used by another person - is still prevalent.

Many businesses and individuals have registered thousands of SIM cards, but their actual purpose of the use is unknown and not appropriate for their actual needs. In some cases, the number of SIM cards registered exceeds the number of employees they have.

This has led to a surge in cases of call harassment, debt collection, fraud, defamation, and insults, causing social disorder and safety concerns. Consequently, many people have suffered property damage due to these illicit activities.

To address the issue of junk SIMs, the Ministry of Information and Communications has launched a nationwide inspection of subscriber information registration and storage from April 5 to June 5.

To ensure the thoroughness of the examination, the ministry has requested the People's Committees of the provinces and centrally-run cities to coordinate and direct the process while tasking the Department of Information and Communications to promptly establish teams for this purpose.

These teams will carry out synchronous examinations nationwide, covering local branches of telecommunications enterprises, service providers, organizations, and enterprises that register for large numbers of phone numbers, especially those displaying signs of abnormality.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has evaluated that the telecom operators have implemented subscriber information standardization strictly this time, with significant participation from the public and media in eliminating the issue of junk SIMs, spam calls, and phone scams.

According to statistics from the ministry, over three years ago, approximately 26 million SIM cards had incorrect information, accounting for around a quarter of the total number of mobile subscribers.

Illustrative image. (Photo: SGGP)

After several rounds of subscriber information standardization and cross-checking with the national population database managed by the Ministry of Public Security, the network operators identified only 3.84 million SIM cards with incorrect information that needed to be standardized.

Following the carriers' text messages to subscribers to standardize their information, there were under 1.5 million SIM cards that had not yet been standardized as of April 5. Thus, the number of SIM cards with incorrect information has decreased dramatically.

In this extensive inspection, the Ministry of Information and Communications has requested to inspect the process of managing mobile subscriber information of local mobile telecommunications businesses and major telecommunications service registration points that show signs of violations.

Additionally, the inspection will also cover telecommunications service providers in the region who engage in standard contracts and general transaction conditions with a significant number of SIM cards.

If any discrepancies or mismanagement of subscriber data are identified during the inspection, the Ministry of Information and Communications will recommend disciplinary action against the network operator's head.