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Truth to be told, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) serves fines to telcos quite often which is why this news might not be surprising to some of our readers out there. Nevertheless, the reason for this particular set of fines is rather concerning since they involve false registration for prepaid SIM cards.

Not only that, the total value of these 50 fines that MCMC has served to telco throughout 2015 is rather high at RM 2.29 million. Out of these amount, 25 were served in March and September while the rest took place this month.

Tune Talk Air Asia

The worst offender for December is Tune Talk with a total of seven fines that worth RM 350,000 which then followed by DiGi and Celcom Mobile. Other telcos that have also received fines from MCMC in this month are Celcom Axiata, Maxis, XOX, Merchantrade Asia (Merchantrade Mobile), Ceres Telekom (FRiENDi), and Altel.

In addition to that, it seems that false prepaid registration is also on the rise judging from the increasing amount of fines that MCMC has served to telcos. Back in March, the total value of fines related to the offense was RM 530,000 before it increased slightly in September to RM 580,00. It then shot up significantly in December at RM 1.18 million.

MCMC Building

In fact, MCMC’s Chief Officer of Network Operations, Enforcement, and Advocacy, Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin has stated that the amount of compounds that MCMC has issued to telcos regarding false prepaid registration has increased 89% as compared to 2014. This is a rather disturbing trend given how prepaid registration supposed to prevent misuses of prepaid services, so we hope that all telcos will be able to buck up when it comes to this issue.

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(Source: MCMC. Additional images: Eddie Yu @ Flickr, u-Pustaka)