New Telecoms Law To Table LegCo

The Government will table the Telecommunications (Registration of SIM Cards) Regulation at the Legislative Council for negative vetting on June 9.

The regulation, gazetted today, seeks to facilitate the prevention and detection of crimes involving the use of pre-paid subscriber identity module (SIM) cards.

The relevant real-name registration programme will launch on September 1. Telecommunications operators are required to put in place the registration infrastructure and back-end systems for real-name registration in around 180 days from that date.

The next phase will start on March 1 next year. For all new pre-paid SIM cards available for sale in the market and new SIM service plans effective from that date, real-name registration must be completed before activation.

For existing pre-paid SIM card users, they have to finish real-name registration with operators in the 360-day grace period ending February 23, 2023.

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