In between the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and SIM registration in July last year, the six telecom operators, and the regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA) traded some amount of accusations and counter accusations about issues concerning both processes. For starters, ahead of MNP launch, some of the telcos simply wrote it off as a worthless and fruitless effort not worth the heavy investments and cumbersome procedures it was to add to the operations of the telecom networks. True to their words, some of the telcos were reluctant to embark on any serious education campaign about MNP. Indeed some telcos even said they had been paying huge moneys to the NCA for public education purposes so it was the duty of the NCA to do the public education on MNP. But the NCA also insisted the telcos had a duty to educate their respective subscribers about the system. In the end, the NCA did its part and the telcos did their own campaigns in their own ways. SIM REGISTRATION WAHALA But the main issue was with SIM registration. The telcos and even some civil society organizations raised issues about the legality of the process, given that the regulation needed to enforce the law was not ready at the time it was to take off. Then when it finally took off, there were issues about the kinds of IDs required for SIM registration, as compared to what pertained in other jurisdictions. Chief among the issues, however, was the hullabaloo about verification of SIM registration, specifically the process of the verification, whereby the regulator submitted registration documents to various ID agencies to determine if the IDs used for the registration was valid. As a result, several registrations came out as invalid, and the telcos began to cry foul, pointing to flaws in the verification process. But the regulator would fire back as usual. The NCA noted then that the telcos had either deliberately or in-deliberately employed agents to do SIM registration on commission basis. So that the telcos paid the agents as per how many SIMs they are able to register over the period of their contract. The NCA pointed out that those agents were motivated by the craving for higher commissions and therefore they flouted the clearly laid down rules regarding the kind of IDs needed for the registration, and how people’s particulars should be captured. There were several complaints of people's numbers being registered under other people's names; and cases of some agents registering people without proper ID's. Indeed, it came out that some agents registered SIMs wholesale using fake names and sold them to willing subscribers, just so that they could present the huge numbers to back their claim for higher commissions. The NCA indeed charged the telcos with the responsibility of the mess created by their agents, saying that the telcos failed to do a proper scrutiny of the work their agents did before forwarding the registration documents to the NCA for verification, and that was mainly the reason for the huge number of invalid registrations then. But the situation seems to have gotten better since March this year.