The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has extended the deadline for re-verification of the customers of mobile service providers in the Northeast to March 31.
The DoT had earlier asked the service providers to complete the exercise by January 19, but the deadline has been extended to March 31, an official at the Maxis-controlled Aircel said today.
However, industry sources said deadline was "secondary" and documentation issue was more important which should have been made simpler.
"The extension of the deadline would not benefit much," the source said.
In the last couple of days, the region saw pre-paid mobile customers thronging to offices of various telecom service providers in a desperate attempt to save their mobile numbers from getting disconnected.
Since, none of the region-specific documents, like voter ID card, domicile certificate, certificate from village headman or panchayat, are acceptable, it is feared that 80 per cent of the rural subscribers will fail to produce the required documents, and hence would go off the mobile loop.
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Most of the customers neither have arms licence, or bank account, or driving licence or passport, and for that matter any of the documents required for identity and address proof, as per the DoT notification.
Northeast has around 20 million mobile subscribers and out of that, 85 per cent of them are pre-paid customers.
Since the later part of 2004, when pre-paid connections were re-introduced after they were lifted for some time, the licence for pre-paid connections has been awarded on an annual basis in the Northeast.