(SinoCast via NewsEdge) The Chinese government has ordered mobile phone subscribers to start registering their mobile phones using real names starting next year, China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) said.
The MII said the registration scheme will not only include new subscribers but also the more than 200 million pre-paid mobile users in China.
Currently, half of the country's 400 million mobile phone users pre-paid plans for their mobile service provided by China Mobile and China Unicom.
Ministry officials said the real-name registration system would help curb the surging number of mobile phone crimes.
Statistics from the Ministry of Public Security suggest that most mobile phone related crimes are committed by users that are registered under fake names.
Experts say that implementing the real-name system may hit China's mobile telecom operators hard in the short term because of fewer new users and increased operational costs.
'The operators will suffer a temporary decrease in the number of consumers and SMS as people may not like having to provide their ID cards for a phone number,' Xu Junqi, vice-dean with the Policy-Making Institute of the Telecommunications Research Centre under MII, said.
But Xu stressed that the new system will benefit both mobile phone users and operators in the long term as it protects consumer interests and reduces operators' management risks.
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