Misuse of cellphones

This is to draw the attention of the ministry concerned the vices erupting from the influx of mobile phone communications in the last couple of years. In the initial stages when mobile phones were introduced, there were checks applied to applicants to provide their personal details on the prescribed form of the mobile company.
At that time the price of the SIM was kept high and, as a result, consumers did not mushroom. Decency, quality and courtesy was then maintained among the mobile users.
But as mobile companies increased and competition among them grew, all earlier checks and balances were withdrawn in favour of sales. SIM cards became available for as low as Rs 100. Gradually, these facilities led to misuse by criminals. Hand-to-hand mobile purchase and sales destroyed the identification system of the users.
Bad calls, threats and other forms of misuse are employed by many who cannot be identified. Then they also choose to shut down their cellphones at will while their callers, some of them genuine claimants of a certain commitment between them, are denied access.
The menace has become alarmingly rampant among those who have little or no moral values: they greatly misuse the facility because they need not provide any address while buying cellphones. So, it is easier for such cellphone users to break commitments or agreements to the peril of the other party. I have personally suffered on this count.
It is time the government regulated cellphone trade. Mobile companies should be asked to pronounce verification and authentication of all SIMs within three months. All those SIMs that will not be presented for verification within three months should stand cancelled at the end of the deadline. The mobile companies should sell the new SIMs only after obtaining personal details of the applicant, supported by a copy of his national identity card.
Mobile companies should be made to develop control software so that if a SIM does not answer an incoming call five times consecutively, the SIM will be cancelled forthwith and made invalid for any further use of it.
The SIM holder should have the facility to report shutting off his SIM for a minimum number of days on the grounds of overseas travel for a maximum of 30 days. The caller should then hear a tape: user out of country till so and so date.