Users of pre-paid cards will find their service suspended in November if they have not identified themselves

new advertising campaign ‘Identifícate’ is to be launched by the Spanish government Interior Ministry at the end of this month with the objective of getting the 20 million mobile phone users with prepaid cards to register before a deadline date of November 7.It’s part of legislation passed in October 2007 under which unidentified mobile phone users will be cut off, as operators will be legally obliged to deactivate the cards which remain unidentified. The legislation was passed as a consequence of the terrorist attacks on the trains in Madrid on March 11 2004, when such pre-paid phones were used to activate the bombs. It’s estimated that currently only a quarter of the current 20 million such clients are identified in Spain. Some phone operators are trying to speed up the process by sending SMS messages to their users, and there is concern that some of the new so-called ‘virtual’ operators have no sales points where clients can register in many parts of the country.

To register your pre-paid card mobile you are asked to go to a sales point of your phone operator, taking along a DNI or foreigners residency paper, while companies will have to show their fiscal identification card.

The cost of the entire operation, estimated at between 30 and 50 million € has to be met by the phone operators.

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