Uganda’s Communications Commission (UCC) expects to complete its SIM card registration exercise by the end of this month.

This is according to the UCC’s executive director, Godfrey Mutabazi, who said the commission is in the final stages of that country’s SIM card registration exercise.

“We dispatched teams to various parts of the country to collect data on the exercise which we shall add up this week to get the real picture,” Mutabazi was quoted in a Daily Monitor newspaper report.

“I cannot tell the exact figures of how many have been added,” he said.

Uganda joins African countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya that have also carried out SIM card registration exercises to help telcos and law enforcement agencies identify mobile phone owners.

This is the East African country’s second deadline after the exercise was initially spoiled by technical glitches on the side of telecoms companies.

It was reported that in light of the technical glitches, the UCC granted a 180-day extension to the service providers: 90 days for registration and another 90 days for verification of the captured data.

Uganda’s SIM registration exercise started in March 2012 with a scheduled cut-off date of 28 February 2013.

Mutabazi said the 180 days was enough for the telcos and would give the UCC time to complete other procedures, before embarking on switching off all the unregistered SIM cards.

“We may not grant extensions for the exercise this time,” he warned.

So far 70% of Uganda’s 16 million phone users have registered their SIM cards, according to the UCC.