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Report: Thailand to restrict mobile phone card sales in bid to halt bombings
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-21 21:13
Thai mobile phone companies will soon require customers to provide
identification and personal information before they can buy prepaid SIM cards
under a government plan aimed at preventing Islamic separatists from using the
devices to trigger bombs.
Officials and company representatives agreed to the plan Thursday following a
spate of bombings _ many of them detonated by mobile phone _ in the troubled
Muslim-majority southern provinces in recent months, television station ITV
reported.
The measure, which takes effect May 10, will apply to prepaid versions of SIM
cards, which can be replenished easily with top-up cards.
Thailand's three southernmost provinces are the only Muslim-dominated parts
of this largely Buddhist kingdom. The area has been beset by violence since
early last year, with about 800 people killed in attacks largely blamed on the
resurgence of a decades-old separatist uprising.
``This is a measure of the private sector, which has been informed of the
frustrating problems of terrorists using prepaid SIM cards as fuses to detonate
bombs,'' Kanawat Wasinsangworn, assistant to the Information and Communications
Technology Minister, told a news conference.
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