PIAC unhappy with lack of information provided
The CRTC yesterday publicly disclosed there has been a 95% decline in the total amount of unauthorized mobile telephone number transfers and SIM swaps from October 2020 to May 2021.
The disclosure was made in response to a February request from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) for the CRTC to direct mobile carriers to make public the number of unauthorized mobile telephone number transfers and SIM swaps made per month for each of their wireless brands, which they currently submit confidentially to the CRTC.
PIAC did not find the CRTC’s response to its request helpful.
“I found it insulting and uninformative,” said John Lawford, executive director of PIAC.
“It’s a percentage,” he said. “So, that could be going from 20 complaints down to one, or it could go 100,000 complaints down to 5,000.”
Lawford believes the number is probably in between those two poles, but that it would be much more “helpful to the public to know what the overall volume is.”
Another issue Lawford sees with the information provided by the CRTC, is there is no indication of whether some carriers have done a better job at reducing their number of SIM swap occurrences than others. “I don’t know if some of them have reduced it 25% and others 100% or 99% — I would like to know that too,” Lawford said.
PIAC also requested the CRTC hold a public hearing into the issue of SIM swapping. The CRTC decline to do so, even though in November, a report by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology recommended the government urge the CRTC to initiate a public inquiry into the matter.
This is not an issue PIAC will be giving up on. “This is not good enough,” Lawford said. “So, yes we will be right back at it again, we’re not giving up.”
