Cellphone nightmare looming?

I thought this had to happen a few years ago already????
 
So you won't be able to buy a cellphone soon without an ID and proof of residence?? A FICA for cellphones.
 
Once this act eventualy goes through it will have positive implications for my industry (WASP). Nobody can realisticly expect it to be flawless but it dose open up new legal grounds and doors for useing your mobile for mobile banking, how subscription based mobile content will be handled and the abuse of cellphones (unsolicited calls, criminal).
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Once this act eventualy goes through it will have positive implications for my industry (WASP). Nobody can realisticly expect it to be flawless but it dose open up new legal grounds and doors for useing your mobile for mobile banking, how subscription based mobile content will be handled and the abuse of cellphones (unsolicited calls, criminal).
Click to expand...

The criminal will allways find another way, SIP based calls can be placed from any other country, with the expected decrease in costs, it becomes possible to do sip to sip using infrastructure in another country... how do you monitor and record that.

Naturally everyone goes on about looking for the exceptions... what execptions if everyone starts doing it? I'd like to see the SA govt try and regulate skype or sip operators in other countries...

D
 
Money

Any posibility of a reduction in prices will be slimmer ................. someone will have to pay for this and guess who that will be:rolleyes:
 
I think the registration of simcards is going overboard. Register all the cellphones. The network operators anyway pick up each time a different sim is put in a particular handset.

In Turkey if you visit with your phone from overseas and perhaps use a local simcard, you have 2 or 3 days to register your phone or it will be blocked on the networks.

With far fewer phones than sims in circulation, it just makes more sense to me.
 
And what about the person who flies in from Germany, the UK, Aussie or wherever, buys a sim card to use while here and then pops it in the bin when he or she leaves? How are they going to deal with that?

Or the cross border trader from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland who's in the country once a week and has had the same pre paid card for the past 10 years?

This is a stupid piece of legislation.
 
IMHO this could easily lead to more crime.

Criminals won't bother getting a phone and would happily take someone else's by whatever force required to do their dealings with. Kill someone, take their phone, start making calls. Once the phone has been blocked, no worries, look for another person with a cellphone. Repeat cycle.

Seems logical.
 
Yes it should help. Though one might argue that all cellphone crime would then, of necessity, have to be perpetrated with both cell & sim stolen together.

This should still be better than the free-for-all at present.
 
:confused: I don't get the point of this law? perhaps someone should explain the need for it??

IMHO no criminal is going to buy a sim / phone if he has to register :rolleyes: nor will it stop his criminal activity, he will just rob someone else:( and most likely that person will be stabbed or shot in the process just for a 49c sim card:eek:

then if that phone / sim is used in a crime like a cash-in transit heist the phone will simply be tossed away by the criminals. now the dumb cops come and knock on my door because my phone / sim was used in a crime:confused:

its like the gun law if my gun gets stolen and I don't report it! I could be held liable for someone getting shot & killed with my gun:( Criminals don't buy guns from registered gun dealers they buy from the black market.

Seriously if my phone is stolen I will have it black listed or permanantly disabled so how is that going to help the cops track criminals?

Well i guess i should stock up with prepaid sim cards @ 49c each a R100-00 should last me a few years. I only use them for mobile internet connection anyway:p
 
The benefits of this is not limited to crime. The real benefit will be to consumers as it opens up new possibilities for the use of cellphones: identity for banking purposes; security access; dispute of ownership (SIMM / Phone); 18+ mobile content distribution (currently there is only a system of good faith to identify the age of the user).

Just taking the crime factor out will not water down the importance of this act.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
The benefits of this is not limited to crime. The real benefit will be to consumers as it opens up new possibilities for the use of cellphones: identity for banking purposes; security access; dispute of ownership (SIMM / Phone); 18+ mobile content distribution (currently there is only a system of good faith to identify the age of the user).
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying, but are they going to give you WASPs access to the databases at MTN, Vodacom, CellC and Virgin?

That opens a whole new debate on data protection and privacy.
 
I don't understand why reatilers need to get involved. Why can't the sim cards just be inactive until the user has phoned up their respective network and provided the required information? That way a user doesn't have to stand in a queue at a busy supermarket and fill in a bunch of information that may be taken down incorrectly or get lost or even leaked.
 
Problem is if you stock up on prepaid SIM's these numbers get recycled, and you sit with a worthless stack of SIM's...
 
Would the act compell parents to declare that they are buying a sim for their <18 year olds? I suppose it is in their interest.

What a headache it will be for those without ID books, knowing the state of Home Affairs.

With 30,000,000 prepaid simcards out there, good luck to the operators/retailers.
 
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