Bahrain too forces mobile users to re-register (but for a different reason)

Posted on August 25, 2008 / 2 Comments

A campaign to crackdown on people making nuisance calls as well as hoax calls to emergency services was launched yesterday.It will require all mobile phone owners in Bahrain registering with their operators before the end of the year.

Telecommunication Regulatory Authority general director Alan Horne said that there were around 600,000 Batelco and Zain mobile telephone owners whose names were not registered.

People who use pre-paid cards will be asked to register their telephones at Batelco and Zain offices as from September 1 and those who fail to do so will only be able to receive and make emergency calls as of January 1.

They will have to turn up at one of the operators’ offices with identification.

That means that more than 5,000 people a day will have to go to the 18 Batelco and 11 Zain outlets over the next four months.

Read the full story in ‘Gulf Daily News’ here.

2 Comments

ggow
August 26, 2008, 2:39 am
an interesting development. I conducted some research on mandatory registration of prepaid mobile phones in the OECD countries. A report based on that study was recently published and is available here:
http://10-44.net/publications/Prepaid_Bulletin%20of%20STS_printcopy.pdf
Chanuka Wattegama
August 26, 2008, 7:32 am
Hi Gordon,

Thank you very much for sharing this paper with us.

Readers downloading stuff from our site is common, but adding their own research is a new trend. We definitely encourage that. I hope the rest of the readers too would follow this example in exploiting the power of web.

I could only glance thru your paper. Will offer feedback after a more leisurely reading.