According to MCMC there were more than 700,000 prepaid numbers found to be unmatched with their respective details provided by the mobile operators to the commission, a worrying concern as regulations requires proper filing of users personal information.

In 2016, operators were fined RM3.17 million for non compliance of the guidelines with 64 compounds issued to Maxis, Digi, Celcom, XOX, Tune Talk, U Mobile and Altel. In view of this MCMC has formed an Industry Task Force for Data Verification, which aimed to verify the integrity of prepaid subscriber’s database and to rectify unmatched data from service provider’s database. This is also part of the Commission’s efforts in its review on the Guidelines on Registration of End-Users of Prepaid Public Cellular Service, in order to strengthen the registration process to address false registration issues, security and data integrity.

The result of the verification has been shared with the respective providers on 5 June 2017 and they were given until 31 December 2017 to take the necessary action. MCMC has instructed providers to suspend and terminate the prepaid services immediately if users’ information were found to be inaccurate or falsely registered and were unable to be rectified within the stipulated time given. Upon termination, the remaining balance for the prepaid services will be forfeited and telco’s are under no obligation to re-issue the same number to the users during any new registration in the future.