savramesh 37 Report post Posted May 9, 2009 Business Line Friday, May 08, 2009 New Delhi, May 7 The Department of Telecom is finally taking action on mobile operators who have been found to be violating the subscriber verification norms. For example, DoT’s vigilance department has initiated action against Vodafone Essar for having unverified subscribers on their network in Uttar Pradesh (East). DoT’s vigilance officers, during the process of verification conducted in March-April 2008, found out that as many as 40 per cent of Vodafone’s subscribers did not have proper documents. Other GSM operators also had about 20 per cent of their subscribers unverified in 2008. The Government had notified the verification norms more than a year ago, which made it mandatory for operators to make sure the connections are being given to consumers with proper address proof and identification. Operators were also asked to conduct physical verification of subscribers by going to their residence. While operators appointed agencies for the purpose, they had sought more time to complete the verification of all the 300 million subscribers. Operators are adding more than 10 million new subscribers each month in a bid to compensate for lower average revenue per user and declining minutes of usage. “While we are doing everything we can to comply with the norms, it takes time to verify each subscriber. So at any given time DoT’s vigilance officers will find a few unverified subscribers if they take a random sample,” said a GSM operator. However, security agencies have told the Government that operators should connect a subscriber only after the identity details are verified. DoT has also asked the operators to shut down dealers who were not verifying the subscriber before giving out a connection. DoT had fixed a penalty of Rs 1,000 for each unverified subscribers found by the vigilance officers. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Himanshu Singh 19 Report post Posted May 9, 2009 It concerns security of our nation so acting in the national interest operators should not compromise over verification procedure and activation should be done after verification only. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
supernova 47 Report post Posted May 9, 2009 i also agree Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
savramesh 37 Report post Posted May 11, 2009 Subscriber verification: DoT to send notice to Vodafone Livemint MONDAY, MAY 11, 2009 DoT, worried over the use of mobile phones by criminals, had asked cellular firms to disconnect services to customers who did not have documentation New Delhi: In an effort to ensure that India’s phone service firms are in compliance with subscriber conditions in their licence agreements with the Union government, the department of telecommunications, or DoT, has decided to send a notice to a Vodafone Essar Ltd unit over discrepancies found in the operator’s subscriber verification practices. Vodafone Essar Digilink Ltd is the name of the firm under which Vodafone Essar, India’s third largest mobile phone operator by subscribers, offers services in areas of Rajasthan, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. “We have found a number of discrepancies in the verifications done over the past year. We are in the process of sending letters to all the operators with whom discrepancies were found as part of tests carried out over the last one year in the different circles,” a senior DoT official said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media. “The letters should go out within the next 10 days.” Mint reviewed the letter to be sent to Vodafone Essar Digilink. A Vodafone Essar spokesperson, contacted late on Saturday, said he would not be able to comment until Monday. DoT, worried over the use of mobile phones by criminals, had asked cellular firms to disconnect services to customers who did not have documentation, such as a proof of address, which is mandated under government rules before issuing a connection, by 31 March 2007. It had fixed a penalty of Rs1,000 for each unverified subscriber and had also asked phone firms to physically verify each subscriber. According to a report by DoT’s vigilance and telecom monitoring cell for the eastern Uttar Pradesh service area, verification of bona fide subscribers is done by dialling 10% of the activations. In this exercise, it was found that 40% of verifications in March 2008 and 25% in April that year were faulty. “This indicates that the licensee is not ensuring adequate verification of subscribers before enrolling them as subscribers,” the cell said in a letter. India has some 400 million mobile phone customers, second only to China. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manishag 17 Report post Posted May 12, 2009 nothing is going to happen. Airtel and Vodafone is doing fake activations ever since they have started there operations in india. at many locations dealers are not authorize to keep the fresh sims of Airtel/Vodafone. they are provided with the preactivated SIM cards. DOT knows it very well. I remember that DOT sends the anonymous people at the distributor place to see the document verification process. but on big retails like Go-Mobile, Mobile Adda, Phirbol pays them them a money. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
