17 October 2017

The regulator’s technical teams and police discovered a SIM box with a capacity for 80 cards.

In mid-October, Congolese regulator ARPCE (Agency for the Regulation of Posts and Electronic Communications) announced that its technical teams had dismantled an illegal mobile network in Pointe-Noire, the country’s economic capital. 

Working closely with the police, they discovered a SIM box with a capacity for 80 cards, 16 pre-activated Airtel SIMs, recharge cards worth nearly CDF50,000 (around USD32), and an electric generator.

Two people were arrested, and they had been operating the network for some time from a wooden hut. 

This latest dismantling comes just a few weeks after another fraudulent network was found in Brazzaville. 

Sandé Ndé, ARPCE’s director of networks and electronic communications services, says it is the mobile operators who are the biggest victims: “This kind of fraud causes them to lose profits which amount to millions of francs. One minute of international calling amounts to 170 francs, and sometimes these fraudsters total up to thousands of minutes of calling.”

Augustin Ngoma, head of the ARPCE departmental antenna in Pointe-Noire, also points out that the lack of verifying a customer’s identity before he or she is sold a SIM is a major contributor to mobile fraud. 

“We recovered 16 activated but unidentified SIM cards from these fraudsters. They were smart enough because they bought all of these from street vendors. Otherwise, they would have been apprehended long before.”

Ngoma adds that as from the beginning of 2018, no SIMs will be sold by street vendors in the country.

Instead, they will have to be purchased through resellers authorised by the operators.