A customer can use a maximum of 10 mobile SIMs with a national identity card. According to the instructions of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), those who currently have additional SIMs registered will have their additional SIMs deactivated in a phased manner. However, customers will have the opportunity to cancel their unnecessary SIM registrations before deactivation. This process is expected to be completed by November.
According to BTRC, if the new limit is implemented, 6.7 million additional SIMs in the names of about 2.6 million customers will have to be deactivated. For this, BTRC will provide a list of mobile operators, which will mention how many SIMs are in the name of each customer. Those who have more than 10 SIMs in their names will be contacted directly and asked to know which 10 SIMs will be kept active. In this case, priority will be given to the most used numbers and SIMs that are associated with mobile banking.
BTRC Chairman Major General (Retd.) Mohammad Emdad-ul-Bari said that the work must be done in a timely manner to reduce the suffering of the people. From August 1, customers will be given a period of 3 months to cancel more than 10 SIMs on their own initiative. After that, BTRC will take initiatives to close the additional SIMs after considering various factors.
Earlier, in 2017, a maximum of 15 SIMs were allowed for a customer. Although some changes were made to the SIM registration system in 2022, no initiative was taken to limit the number of SIMs. However, this new decision has been taken due to the increasing trend of using additional SIMs for fraud, deception and criminal activities in recent times.
A meeting on law and order has seen that some people are using additional SIMs to cheat through extortion, blackmail and number cloning. They are even using the names of government officials to trap common people with false identities.
According to BTRC data as of March 2025, there are a total of 186.2 million active SIMs in the country. However, the number of actual subscribers is about 67.5 million. Of these, more than 80 percent of subscribers use less than 5 SIMs. 16 percent use 6 to 10 SIMs, and only 3 percent of subscribers have more than 11 SIMs in their names.