Report: Thailand to restrict mobile phone card sales in bid to halt bombings
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-21 21:13

Thai mobile phone companies will soon require customers to provide identification and personal information before they can buy prepaid SIM cards under a government plan aimed at preventing Islamic separatists from using the devices to trigger bombs.

Officials and company representatives agreed to the plan Thursday following a spate of bombings _ many of them detonated by mobile phone _ in the troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces in recent months, television station ITV reported.

The measure, which takes effect May 10, will apply to prepaid versions of SIM cards, which can be replenished easily with top-up cards.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces are the only Muslim-dominated parts of this largely Buddhist kingdom. The area has been beset by violence since early last year, with about 800 people killed in attacks largely blamed on the resurgence of a decades-old separatist uprising.

``This is a measure of the private sector, which has been informed of the frustrating problems of terrorists using prepaid SIM cards as fuses to detonate bombs,'' Kanawat Wasinsangworn, assistant to the Information and Communications Technology Minister, told a news conference.

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