With the Lithuanian government considering mandatory registration of prepaid SIM cards from 2024, mobile operators are sceptical about the measure, saying it could cause chaos in socially vulnerable groups and give rise to a black market in SIM cards.
The proposal of registering prepaid SIM cards was made back in 2017, but only received the government’s approval this year. It was decided that the damage caused by phone fraudsters and other criminals outweighed the costs to mobile operators and the potential inconvenience to consumers.
Between 2021 and 2022, around 550 crimes involving mobile phones were reported.
Asta Buitkutė, spokeswoman for Tele2, argues, however, that tackling phone crimes by registering prepaid cards “does not reflect modern trends” and may give rise to an illegal market for phone cards.
Marta Bogužaitė, of Bite, believes that pre-paid cards will be easy to import from other countries where they are not registered, such as Latvia, and successfully use in Lithuania.
She also believes that there would be a niche market for intermediaries who would resell already registered cards to others.
Vytautas Bučinskas, of Telia, pointed out that prepaid SIM cards are often used by tourists.
“Pre-payment services are used by many people of advanced age for whom even a simple remote identification process would be a challenge. Hundreds of thousands of prepaid SIM cards are also used in remote devices to control gates, alarms and various IoT solutions. Registering all of them would not only be a major inconvenience for users, but also a risk of chaos if they are blocked,” Bučinskas noted.
According to the Office of the Communications Regulator, in the second quarter of 2023, there were more than 1.2 million users of prepaid SIM cards, accounting for almost 26 percent of all active SIM cards on the market.
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