6 main reasons why UCC will not disconnect your unregistered phones lines

If you asked me, I am sure your unregistered phone line will not be disconnected by March 1, 2013, below are six reasons as to why you should stay upbeat:

1. Acute reduction in tax collections: the last few months have seen Airtime and Alcohol produce the most towards tax collections according to URA reports. Suspending phone lines means users will not spend on calls and data thus a huge deficit for URA.
2. Mistakes by telecoms: telecoms have made a mass of mistakes along the way as they registered numbers. It has been very common on social media platforms seeing users/ subscribers complain of how they have registered twice or even more but their records are not in the database of Telecom companies. That shows that along the way, information is lost before it is captured, this is not a subscriber’s mistake, it is a Telecom company’s mistake thus its hefty implications should not be borne by the subscriber. Besides a sim registered on the final day, would take no less than a week to have the records keyed into the Telecos system. This means during this period this line will have to be deactivated. It does not make sense.
3. Government direly needs money: earlier in the day New Vision tweeted a link showing that ministry of Disaster Preparedness does not have money. That is a very critical ministry, it falls under office of the Prime Minister. We are all aware that so much money has been sent back to the donors in a bid to account for misappropriated funds, this has left a dire financial gap. The only way money is bei
   ng generated is through taxes among others, that means we cannot leave out one of the most productive sectors, telecom just because subscribers have not hit a registration deadline.
4. Users spend a lot of money on airtime: for various reasons, Ugandans spend so much of their income on airtime. On a Sanyu FM morning show today 27th February, 2013, Fat Boy a.k.a James Onen confessed how he spends over Ugx. 300,000 on data and slightly less on voice calls, that is relevant to most urban and peri-urban based Ugandans. It will hurt the players so much if they de-registered users because they did not register in time.
5. In Uganda, we are never serious about timeline and projects: what don’t we know? Terrestrial Digital TV migration, speed governors, national IDs and many others, all these projects did not hit their timeline, and even others have not commenced till now. So by the norm we can be sure Sim Card registration will not be any peculiar.
6. Telecoms control UCC: UCC is financed greatly by telecoms, it sits down with these telecom companies, discusses amd agrees. You will understand why telecom companies are never penalized as ought to be for poor QoS. It is because of this mutual kind of understanding between them and the regulator. UCC will only show its muscle when it comes to radio stations. De-activating 4 million user lines will hurt telecom companies and in turn UCC will feel the pinch. Thus a strong reason to be sure your unregistered line will be available.

In a nutshell, I think the date for sim card registration will be extended