Prepaid Card Registration

Since the January 25 bus explosion incident, there have been moves for the registration of prepaid Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards. According to police investigators, the bomb used to blast the north-bound Newman Goldliner in EDSA bus was cellphone activated, the SIM card in the phone prepaid.

Prepaid SIM card registration would have been feasible had the idea been thought of, say, twelve years ago, when each prepaid SIM card cost Php1,000. Materials used for SIM cards were too expensive. Thus, prepaid SIM cards were not mass produced.

Now, there are more SIM cards in the Philippines than human beings! Prices of silicon and other impurities used to make that gold plated chip are now insanely cheap, so prepaid SIM cards are mass produced. A single SIM card distributor in Divisoria can sell thousands of SIM cards in one transaction.

SIM cards can be as low as Php10. And they don't have to be from Smart or Globe to be effective bomb activators. With this cheap price, prepaid SIM cards are virtually disposable. A bomber can just throw away every SIM card he uses for every bomb he activates.

There are too many prepaid SIM cards available in the market, and registering each one of them would entail useless costs. Perhaps the only way to prevent use of prepaid SIM cards to activate bombs is to eradicate prepaid SIM card usage entirely, ordering telecommunications company to deactivate all prepaid accounts. People would have to apply for postpaid accounts, now with Php300 plans. This, of course, would cause uproar if not an uprising.

The point is, prepaid SIM card registration is not the solution. We have to do better than that.

Kate Lomoljo
Entry No. 11