The mobile operators are leveraging their own mobile strengths to capture prepaid customer information.
The registration process was formally introduced at the beginning of July in the form of the Regulation of Interception and Provision of Communication-related Information Amendment Act (RICA), which requires all the operators to register prepaid customers.
The mobile operators have been preparing long and hard for the implementation of RICA and, at the beginning of this month, started rolling out point-of-presence and mobile devices to complete the task.
Vodacom will have the largest chunk of SA`s prepaid subscribers to capture, with around 32 million customers listed on the service. The company, along with its counterparts, says it has deployed a simple informal mobile solution that has been made available on a cellphone.
These roaming phones will be used primarily for the more rural or informal areas, where Internet technologies are unavailable. Vodacom did not disclose what form of the mobile solution it is using, whether WAP, mobile Internet or SMS.
According to MTN`s chief corporate officer, Zolisa Masiza, it has a similar solution. A RICA agent will capture the details in a text message form, and transmit the details to the central database through SMS.
MTN has the next biggest task ahead, with 14.4 million prepaid SIMs on its network. However, it may have an easier time of reaching the customer, since its mobile capturing will be undertaken by staff members that already service the informal areas.
The company last year hired around 280 000 MTN Zoners to canvass the rural areas and sign up prepaid subscribers, gaining it six million new customers. The company will use the same staff to help capture RICA information.
"We are obviously urging people into our stores to do the capturing, where there are trained staff to manage the flow of people," adds Masiza.
Cell C says its option will be based on a WAP service, also deployed in similar regions.
Straight to the point
All three operators have also started to deploy a point-of-presence device across all the major retail stores and other points where airtime can be bought.
"Some retailers included RICA into their point-of-sale systems. However, where they have not been able to integrate it into their systems, we have provided them with terminals that are specifically designed to collect the information. In many cases, these terminals will be used to collect information for all three cellular networks," says Vodacom`s chief communications officer, Dot Field.
These terminals have been equipped with a Web-based solution developed by Vodacom`s Gateway Communications, which can be used to capture user information into the various operators` data stores.
According to Masiza, the operators all shared the cost of the manufacture of the terminals that are being deployed countrywide. However, the software deployment for each of the operators is different, since they will each have different storage methods.
The operators will be individually responsible for storing the customer information, which can be released to the authorities if the correct authorisation is obtained.
The operators are expected to store that information for at least five years, even if the SIM card is no longer in use.
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