Poland deactivates 12M unregistered SIMs

The Polish telecoms operator, the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE), imposed a deadline of 2 February 2017 for all SIMs to be registered. As a result up to 12 million unregistered prepaid SIMs may have been deactivated.

New legislation was introduced to counteract terrorism and prevent crime, as an estimated 2.5 million unregistered SIMs are thought to have been sold illegally over the past six months, the use of which is unknown. SIM registration was to be enforced by disabling SIMs that had not been registered by 2 February 2017.

According to Telecompaper 68.7% of prepaid SIMs had been registered by the deadline date, however, it may still possible register SIMs, most operators allow users to register SIM cards in store, on their websites or through online banking. Of the 55 million SIM cards in Poland, 27 million are prepaid and only 19 million of these prepaid SIMs are currently registered.

The last major cull of Polish SIMs happened back in 2015 when T-Mobile deactivated nearly 4 million of its inactive users.

Of course it is possible to get a Polish number without getting a SIM card using the Vyke app. Vyke is a provider of SIM-free Polish numbers to a global user base. If you’re in the UK you get a free Polish number when they sign up, you can then receive calls from Poland for free, and make low cost calls to Poland and the world through the Vyke app.

*  * Guest post from our Polish blog. Check out more here.