Analysts said that mobile operators were set for a short-term hit in revenues as many of Africa's poorer or more remote users struggle to produce the necessary documents and so risk being cut off. A number of African governments are calling on companies to register all their pre-paid mobile phone users, who make up 97-99 percent of the market on the continent, in order to boost national security and help fight phone-related crime."The introduction of mandatory registration of SIM cards in at least 10 countries has resulted in a dramatic slowdown in subscriber growth and will see the disconnection of millions of unregistered subscribers," economic forecast group IHS Global Insight said in a report.
South Africa has led implementation of the policy, giving customers until the end of this year to register numbers.Both MTN Group Ltd and Vodacom Group Ltd last year reported falls in users by 6.4 and 4.9 percent, respectively.Drops are expected elsewhere as another nine nations, which include Kenya, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and account for about 80 percent of subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa, follow suit. Deadlines range from later this month to 2011."As the registration deadline passes in each country, a significant one-off drop-off is expected as those unregistered SIM cards are deactivated," IHS said in the March study.The ease with which Africans can get a mobile phone number -- picking up SIM cards and credit cheaply on the street with no need for documentation -- has helped swell official user numbers from just one million in 1996 to around 350 million by the end of 2009, according to the United Nations. But many on the continent have more than one SIM card, mainly to avoid the costs of calling one network from another.Analysts say many of these are likely to be culled."(Registration) will have an impact initially. People with two cards may end up choosing one," said Christopher Hartland-Peel, an African equity analyst at Exotix. "But it will be a short-term issue -- it's going to be like stopping at a red light (and going on)," he added.
