Three Major Mobile Operators Block 34 Million Prepaid Cards

The deadline for prepaid SIM card registration ended on February 28, 2018. Therefore, starting March 1, 2018, unregistered prepaid cards will be blocked from making outgoing calls and sending SMS messages.

Three major cellular operators, namely Telkomsel, Indosat, and XL Axiata, have blocked 34.2 million unregistered SIM cards. Meanwhile, the number of registered prepaid SIM cards from these three operators reached 284.24 million units out of a total of 304 million cards.

As of March 13, 2018, Telkomsel had blocked 13 million SIM cards, followed by Indosat with 11.6 million, and XL Axiata with 9.6 million. If registration is not completed by the end of this month, a second phase of blocking will be implemented for these 34.2 million cards from the three operators. This will prevent them from receiving voice calls and SMS messages starting April 1, 2018. If registration is still not completed, internet data services will be blocked starting May 1, 2018, and the numbers will be completely blocked, rendering them unusable.