More than 7.5 million mobile phone numbers in Ghana are likely to be deactivated come March 3, 2012, the legally set date by which all SIM cards in country should have been registered. The latest Summary of Data Verification for the SIM registration, available from the National Communication Authority (NCA), indicates that as at February 6, 2012, 5,580,875 various identity cards presented for SIM registration were rendered invalid. Meanwhile there is another 1,457,858 cards that have been submitted but are yet to be verified by the respective agencies such as the Passport Office, Electoral Commission (EC), Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), and the National Identification Authority (NIA). Again the NCA has confirmed that as at January 16, 2012 the total number of data submitted for verification stood at 22,708,716, which the NCA said was 98% of the total number of mobile subscriptions in Ghana; so the remaining two per cent, which is about 463,443 subscriptions have not even bothered to register. So in total, 5,580,875 plus 1,457,858 plus 463,443, which is equal to 7,502,176 (33%) mobile subscriptions face possible deactivation come March 3, 2012, some through no fault of theirs. Out of the total IDs either declared invalid or unchecked, 3,048,242 are MTN numbers; 2,066,301 are Vodafone numbers; 936,143 are Tigo numbers; 924,216 are Airtel numbers, and the remaining 56,355 are Expresso numbers. The data also shows as at January 16, 2012, MTN had submitted 9,162,599 registration data for verification; Vodafone came second with 5,425,911 submissions, Tigo came third with 4,821,288 submissions, followed by Airtel with 3,103,779 submissions and Expresso followed with 195,139 submissions. The NCA has recently stated in a press release it would not extend the March 3, 2012 legally mandated deadline, no matter what. It has therefore asked the telecom operators to follow up with their subscribers whose registrations have been declared invalid to go regularise their registration or they would be deactivated on March 3, 2012. The telecom operators face sanctions under the newly passed SIM Registration Regulation if they refuse to deactivate unregistered numbers on March 3, 2012. But the telecom operators have argued that, in as much as they are ready to deactivate the 463,443 subscriptions, whose owners have not bothered to register, and of those whose ID cards were actually found to be fake, they have a difficulty deactivating those whose registration may have been made invalid due to human error at either the registration or manual verification point. In several meetings between the NCA and telecom CEO’s, the latter have argued that they have managed to get back to several of the subscribers to go regularise their registration but those subscribers submitted the same identification cards and particulars, which were declared invalid during the manual verification at the various agencies. The telecom operators provided a common short code, 400, to which all subscribers on every network are required to send a blank text message and receive a reply that would indicate whether one’s SIM card is registered or not.