Re-registration to go online? What will they think of next?

Re-registration to go online? What will they think of next?

Kipp is amused and frustrated by the irony of the TRA instructing the telecoms to take the re-registration system online.

October 30, 2012 11:52 by Eva Fernandes

Du recently was granted a re-certification of its corporate services department ISO accreditation. On the other hand, Etisalat which has operations in 17 markets across the Middle East, Africa andAsia, has recently announced the launch of e-Life 2.0 which will feature its Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) platform. Despite our usual grumblings about local telecoms, both providers have really evolved in its endeavors to push the boundaries of telecommunication services in the UAE.

And then, there is the re-registration of the UAE SIM card.

For reasons beyond Kipp, this rather straight forward and quite frankly unnecessary process of re-identification of the ownership of each SIM card is being painfully dragged out with deadline being extended only to be extended yet again. Adding to the noise of the confusion surrounding the campaign, the TRA has instructed telecoms to get the re-registration process online and to get it fast.

Emirates 24/7 reports the TRA said the following in a statement: “The TRA also instructed the operators to speed up the launch of the online registration services to accelerate the process and ease the load on the commercial outlets.”

Is it not amusing that a telecom provider resorts to manual forms, pens and paper to validate details which have already been entered into its database? Is it also not terribly amusing that a telecom provider will struggle with the promise of providing an online platform for registration?