Beginning on December 1, 2022, MTN Ghana will start to completely disconnect all SIM cards that have finished Stage 1 (Linkage of Ghana Card ID to SIM Card) but have not finished Stage 2 (Biometric Capture) (“Not fully registered with the Ghana Card”).
The SIM cards of 5,701,149 subscribers will therefore be deactivated on December 1, 2022.
By November 26, 2022, 16,411,794 MTN Ghana customers had successfully finished the bio-capture phase, while 22,112,943 had successfully linked their Ghana cards to their SIM cards (Stage 1).
The action is in accordance with the National Communications Authority’s (NCA’s) decision, which was shared with all telecom providers at a meeting on November 17, 2022.
In a statement, it claimed that by disconnecting the data services of SIM Cards that have not properly registered with the Ghana Card as instructed on November 20, 2022, it had already complied with the first stage of the mandate.
“Customers should note that a fully registered SIM card is one that has successfully completed both Stage 1 (Linkage) and Stage 2 (Bio-capture). All deactivated SIM cards can be reactivated within six months from December 01, 2022 (the date of deactivation), by completing the bio-capture process”, it explained.
The telecom behemoth stated that if deactivated SIM cards are not activated by the end of May 2023, they will be discarded.
Therefore, MTN asked all of its customers to make an effort to complete their registration as soon as possible at any of its service centers.
It expressed regret over the inconvenience the deactivation has brought around for its clients and pledged to help get them back online.
It finished by pledging support for the national SIM registration initiative, which aims to create an accurate customer database and reduce fraud in the nation.
