Indian telecoms ask government to approve remote SIM registration with facial biometrics
With the COVID-19 outbreak making in-person visits to telecom branches for biometric SIM registration impossible, mobile service providers in India have asked the government to allow a new self-KYC process with biometric facial recognition and liveness detection, ET Telecom reports.
The businesses are asking that customers be allowed to register new SIM cards and port phone numbers digitally with the process, in a letter from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to Department of Telecommunications Secretary Anshu Prakesh.
The person applying to receive or move a phone number fills in the required forms with the mobile operator, and then submits a photo with a geolocation tag and a time stamp water mark. A five-second video enables the liveness check, and back-end teams at the telecom will validate the customer’s data. The number of registrations customers can perform are limited to two per day. COAI says the proposed process is designed to meet the government’s KYC guidelines, as a digital equivalent of existing procedures.
Leading cellular service providers in India Vodaphone Idea, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel collectively signed up 500,000 new customers in March, compared to an average monthly number between 2.5 and 3 million, according to ET Times.
Indian telecoms were blocked from biometric Aadhaar-based onboarding by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on private sector use of the system, and businesses have struggled to find satisfactory KYC processes since, with video-KYC rejected by regulators last year.
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![The Indian Railway’s telecom arm RailTel has re-floated a tender for a CCTV network with biometric facial recognition after the previous attempt was killed in February amid allegations of conflict of interest and problems with the tender procedure, India’s The Wire[https://thewire.in/government/raliways-cctv-project-new-tender] reports. The new tender is the fourth attempt to contract the project. A tender process for the Rs 10 billion (US$137.7 million) contract was launched last year, and brought bids from eight major companies to equip rail stations and coaches with the cameras[https://www.biometricupdate.com/201811/cctv-network-with-facial-recognition-coming-to-indian-rail-system], but others left out of the project applied pressure, and the third attempt was cancelled. The new tender has a wider scope, and a total price tag estimated closer to Rs 15 billion ($210 million), a senior RailTel official told The Wire. The bidding document has been amended to make the process more competitive, with broader qualifying criteria. “Since the basket is a larger one this time, we are expecting more players to join the race. After due diligence, scrutiny and technical evaluation, contracts will be awarded,” the official says. IP cameras featuring facial recognition, motion detection, quick review and intrusion detection capabilities. They will record footage, and also be monitored by security personnel from the Railway Protection Force and Government Railway Police. More than 50 rail stations already have CCTV surveillance systems, and RailTel has budgeted Rs 3 billion ($43 million) to extend CCTV coverage to 11,000 trains and 8,000 stations during the current fiscal year.](https://d1sr9z1pdl3mb7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/29132211/indian-railway-stations-150x150.jpg)
Article Topics
biometric liveness detection | biometrics | digital identity | facial recognition | India | KYC | SIM card registration | telecom
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