Ghita Mezzour, the Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition and Administrative Reform, revealed that recent weeks have seen the suspension of a large number of anonymous numbers in Morocco’s telecommunications sector.
She stressed that the Kingdom has “strong security services that are following the matter and urged citizens not to be afraid of it.”
Responding to a question about the matter during a question-and-answer session on Monday at the House of Representatives, Mezzour stated, “there is ongoing monitoring with telecommunications operators,” adding that “in recent weeks, a large number of anonymous SIM cards have been suspended.”
The Minister elaborated further, “there is monitoring, and we have strong security services in Morocco that are following this matter, so there is no need to fear,” reminding the members of parliament of the regulations and procedures that govern the sector in Morocco.
Mezzour also pointed out that the legal framework governing the subscription to telecommunications services allows any person, “individual or legal, to benefit, upon request, from subscribing to the services offered by public telecommunications network operators, per the provisions of Article 23 of Law No. 24.96 relating to postal and telecommunications, as amended and supplemented.”
The minister emphasized that public telecommunications network operators are “now obliged to identify the applicant, and the operator remains responsible for identifying its customers who have purchased the card from various distributors, sellers, or commercial agents so that each customer must present an ID card.”
In response to the emergence of certain practices related to the circulation and distribution of anonymous SIM cards, Mezzour stated that the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT) has taken a set of measures, the most important of which is “the issuance of a decision regarding the identification of mobile service subscribers.”
She explained that “under this decision, operators are now obliged to update the subscriber database and make it more reliable and credible by ensuring that each active subscriber number includes information related to the subscriber’s name, surname, ID number, and subscription date.”
The Minister emphasized that “a deadline of three months has been set for all subscriber identification information to be available in the database, otherwise the operator concerned is obliged to cancel and deactivate the relevant SIM card.”
She also noted that the operators have “seriously engaged in this process by adhering to the provisions of this decision and implementing it on the ground.”
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