Peru to begin process of validating data from more than 42 million lines

This is a machine translation of Osiptel's press release

The Ministry of the Interior, in joint work with the Private Investment Supervisory Agency in Telecommunications (Osiptel), the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status (Reniec), the National Superintendence of Migration and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the actions to strengthen citizen security, will begin a process of data validation of the owners of more than 42 million active mobile telephone lines, authorized by Supreme Decree No. 014-2024-IN, published this Wednesday in the Legal Norms bulletin of the newspaper El Peruano.

According to the law, this action will allow for the full identification of Peruvian and foreign citizens who contract the public telecommunications service. Also, for the first time, the identity of the seller or natural person who directly intervenes in the contracting of mobile telephone lines will be validated.

With the implementation of this supreme decree, the strengthening of the National Registry of Mobile Terminal Equipment for Security (Renteseg) is reaffirmed, which is aimed at preventing and combating the illegal trade of cell phones, joining the efforts made by the National Police of Peru (PNP) to combat this crime.

Fight against extortion and other crimes

In the framework of the frontal fight against organized crime and common crime undertaken by the Interior sector, the law will discourage criminals from accessing mobile telephone lines to commit crimes such as extortion, kidnapping, contract killing, among others, taking into account that they will be fully identified.

The decree also seeks to combat the sale of stolen cell phones and the sale of chips in unauthorized places, since the lines used for operation will be suspended by the competent authorities.

It is important to remember that altered, invalid, duplicated and cloned cell phones cannot access the national mobile network for their operation, since they are identified daily and blocked by Renteseg.

Finally, the law will allow for the strengthening of police intelligence and investigation work against criminal organisations and gangs that use mobile telephone lines to commit various crimes.

It will strengthen the work of Osiptel

The regulation will also strengthen the work carried out by OSIPTEL, as administrator of Renteseg, since people who want to acquire one or more mobile telephone lines must be fully identified. Those people who provide false or incomplete data will be identified through a comparison with the competent entities and said lines will be deactivated.

According to the entity, one of the main problems detected so far is that the register of subscribers included lines with names and surnames consisting only of consonants, non-alphabetic characters or phrases of any kind, including rude words, which made it impossible to identify the author of any crime committed from these mobile lines. With the implementation of the supreme decree, this problem will end.

Lima, November 7, 2024