Mobile phone subscribers can re-buy their previous connections if they fail to re-register their SIM cards with biometric data within the May 31 deadline.

In a meeting with mobile phone operators yesterday, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission took the decision, allowing a 15-month window for the re-purchase of SIMs.

Users will have the option to re-purchase the mobile number, which became a personal identification for them, as a new connection, said a senior official of the BTRC, who was present at the meeting at the regulator’s office.

For doing so, the operators will have to pay the SIM tax -- Tk 100 per connection -- in line with the rules of purchasing new SIMs. Till the first week of May, the total number of re-registered SIMs stood at about 9.20 crore, while active connections as of March was 13.09 crore.

The operators received a poor response from their subscribers for SIM re-registration, said a senior executive of an operator.

The regulator has also allowed all kinds of promotional offers to attract customers to biometric registration of SIMs, as around four crore SIMs are still unregistered with biometric verification, an official said.

Operators are currently running several promotional campaigns and offering foreign tours, free talk time and free internet bandwidth for SIM re-registration.