Sunday, April 29, 2012

21 questions: SIM card registration

Dear telecom fraternity,

I hear the communication commission wants to you get all our simcards registered. I've heard ads on the radio saying my simcard will become my address. So on this matter, I have 21 Questions I hope you can help me answer.

21 QUESTIONS
1. Is this true? I mean the part of my sim card becoming my address... scary!
2. Will you actually be able to send my relatives from Kabulasoke to my slum home in Nkere Zone by a mere touch of a button?
3. Is there a possibility that you are planning to advertise my location to all and sundry as long they have my number? and might this include all my stalkers, over zealous fans, weirdos, and the deranged alike?

ADs
4a. How come there are no fancy ads on this? Only one of you is doing a hell of a job of making me queasy about registering... I guess hence these questions.
4b. How come you afford money for all the other ads and simply send me a text to say it is good for me to register? For a record, I don't see the good in registering. One of you at least has the good sense of giving land to some puny lucky winners but the rest of the lot simply say I should walk to the kiosk hand in my details and all will be well. What a really hear is :" Go and sell your soul and all will be well"

Benefits:
5. Where are the  real benefits? Will there be no dropped calls the moment I register?
5b. Will the signal quality improve?
Will I get a faster connection?
6. Will the calls be cheaper? Will the interconnection fees be removed for the registered?
7. Will I get faster response from police when in need of their services?
8. Will this bring automatic access to ambulance to my area?
9. Is there any benefit to the user for this new registration drive, anything at all?

Costs
Soon we shall be going to be counted in the national census, from the little bird I heard, it looks like that will also be this year
10. why not simply register  the simcard then?
11. Who pays for the passport photo I must deliver to the registration desk? Most passport photo booths give you 3 instead of 1 and if you are in Kampala that would be leave your wallet 10,000 shillings  lighter.
12. What If I don't have a valid ID? Those are rare in our slums. We all hoped to get IDs from the national ID efforts. Look where that has left us.
13. Did someone say passport? instead of IDs What is that?

Convenience / Efficiency/ forward thinking:

14. Could the network provider please install cameras at their kiosks and take a digital photo?
15. In this day and age should we still be doing paper registration?
16. Why not proper biometrics instead of the tedium of filling registration forms from a couple of million simcards across the country?
17. Have you or the commission taken into account the environmental impact of all that paper work?
18. Are you trying to create more jobs for data entrants plowing through all those pages of data?

Legal:

19. Is it possible that my data may get lost or find its way into the wrong hands?
20.I would like to sign an NDA with the service provider before I register lest my data end up in the wrong hands accidentally. Is that possible?
21. How do we verify that our data is safe?

Origins:

21a. How did we get here? fist mass distribution of almost free simcards and then later a costly registration!
21b. Must we firefight everything? What happened to our planning?

Conclusions:

I see many carts ahead of horses. And we maybe called upon to do biometrics registration in 3-5 years when someone figures it is a better method. Our biodata is valuable, no, it's actually portent. Kindly keep it safe for all our sakes.

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