Government mulls ownership cap, higher prices for SIMs  

MANILA, Philippines — Owning multiple Subscriber Identity Module cards will be difficult and costly as the Department of Information and Communications Technology is looking into limiting SIM ownership and imposing a registration fee for a fourth card and beyond.

“If it is individual (registration), some countries limit it to five, others may be higher or lower. In our case, we have three telcos only. We can limit it to three, so you can have one number each. It can be four because at times, one telco, two products,” DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said yesterday at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum.

Initially, the DICT wanted to make a distinction between corporate and individual registration to give firms the leeway to keep several SIM cards.

Uy said even enterprises will be required to present their securities documents to prove the nature of their business and justify the need to own multiple SIM cards.

As for the registration fee, Uy said it can be compared to Singapore’s car ownership, in which citizens must pay for a certificate of entitlement to purchase a vehicle.

During a Senate hearing on Sept. 5, the National Bureau of Investigation reported that its agents successfully registered SIM cards in telco sites using a fake ID bearing the photo of a smiling monkey.

Meanwhile, digital copy of national IDs will hopefully be deployed by yearend as the public and President Marcos are losing their patience over delays in its rollout, according to the DICT.

“A lot of delays have already happened and there are many of our countrymen who have been complaining that up to this date, they have not yet received their national ID,” Uy said during a briefing at Malacañang on Tuesday.

The rollout of digital national IDs will be done simultaneously with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)’s printing of physical IDs.

The PSA has stored 80 million identities in its database, Uy noted. “We hope to deploy significantly the digital ID by end of the year,” he said.

“For us to be able to convert it to a digital format, we needed access to that database so that we can deploy it on a digital platform... it can eventually be used for all our online transactions,” he added.

The digital national ID can be used for the distribution of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s social amelioration package, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps and the Department of Transportation’s fuel subsidy program, Uy said.

The digital ID would also be included in the e-Gov application.

The PSA hopes to print 50 million physical IDs by end of the year.

Over 80.2 million Filipinos have registered for a national ID. Of this number, 36 million have received a physical card while 39.49 million have received the electronic or printed version.

Meanwhile, Uy justified on Wednesday the DICT’s proposed P300-million intelligence fund for 2024, which he claimed would be used to combat cybercrime.

“Our hands are tied if we do not have this kind of capability. Scammers are using various means in order to avoid detection and to avoid capture or arrest,” he said. –  Helen Flores, Rainier Allan Ronda