Phone companies disconnect over 60,000 unregistered customers

The deadline for the mandatory registration of prepaid cellular phones was initially in March, but was extended twice, eventually landing on July thirteenth. Well, it appears that those extensions led consumers to doubt that the disconnections would really take effect, but on Friday night over sixty thousand customers from Belize Telemedia Limited and Smart were cut off. According to Anjali Vasquez, the Public Relations Manager for B.T.L., they expected to be bombarded with last minute registrations on Friday, but that was not the case. Instead, the crowd showed up on Saturday to get their phones reconnected.

Anjali Vasquez, P.R. Manager, Belize Telemedia Limited

“Actually the last day of registrations was slow. We didn’t get as many people in as we had hoped, being that it was the twelfth hour at that point. We believe everybody who wanted to register pretty much did it beforehand. We had opened on the Saturday before as well but we were at that point still forty-five thousand unregistered numbers in our system so we expected that quite a few people would be coming in over the weekend—which, we opened on Saturday again because if you wanted to reconnect your number immediately, we understand that this is your number so we wanted to be able to accommodate that, which we did. We had quite a busy Saturday this weekend and again this morning we’re getting a lot of people in.”

Delahnie Bain

Anjali Vasquez

“Okay, so people are coming in to reconnect.”

Anjali Vasquez

“That’s right. What we’ve been emphasizing is that we want to give you your service, you just need to register that number and it’s a very simple process. I mean it’s five minutes of your time with your ID and your number, you come in, you register and we reconnect you. A lot of people had credit on their numbers at the time of disconnection, so we’re just putting back that balance that you had at that time back on your phone.”

Delahnie Bain

“So at the end of Friday how many ended up getting disconnected?”

Anjali Vasquez

“Well, it was a process over the weekend so basically under forty-five thousand because we had mentioned that as of six o’clock, even if you register at six o’clock on Friday, you were taken off the disconnection list because you had registered. So a little under forty-five thousand and we started reconnecting immediately on Saturday morning if you came in and needed to register and reconnect. We invite you to come in and register your number, reconnection is free and whatever is remaining on your account at that time will be put back onto your account. So your number belongs to you, come in and register.”

While Smart had customers going in at the eleventh hour on Friday, it also pulled the plug on thousands of unregistered customers, who have since been filing in to reconnect. Smart’s PR Officer, Ian Courtenay told News Five today that in the first instance, the accounts are only suspended and can be reclaimed by the customers in the next few weeks, after which they will be completely disconnected.

Ian Courtenay

Ian Courtenay, Public Relations Officer, Smart

“Countrywide we did see an increase in people coming in to register. At midnight, we of course did our disconnections so Saturday morning was very busy day in all our showrooms countrywide as people realized that it was something that was followed through.”

Delahnie Bain

“How many people ended up getting disconnected?”

Ian Courtenay

“We have just about twenty thousand customers who were disconnected. Of course, we suspect some of those are lost phones and so on but, as I said countrywide, we have had longer amounts of customers who have been in the showrooms. But people have been coming in and so on. We have, of course suspended all the unregistered accounts. So we have a period of time that we will keep those numbers in case people are interested in keeping the numbers and they can come in and register. And then I suspect after a couple weeks those numbers will be deactivated and put back in the available list.”

Delahnie Bain

“What about—I know some customers may have had credit on their phones, what happens in those cases when they come to reconnect?”

Ian Courtenay

“If they come in before we disconnect the numbers—so while the numbers are being suspended they will still have the credit. But once we disconnect that and put the numbers back, that credit will be erased. If somebody comes in and request a number and that number is given out, then they have lost their number. So we would encourage customers who have the intention of wanting to keep the numbers to come in and the usual registration process will continue from here on so they’ll have to bring an ID and proof of address and so on.”

During the suspension period, reconnection is free and any credit on your accounts will be restored.