more on Pre-paid mobile phones

Begin forwarded message:

From: Esther Dyson <[email protected]>
Date: October 13, 2006 10:19:51 PM EDT
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IP] Pre-paid mobile phones

  I  don;t know about the US, but it *is* a legal requirement in  
India, where cell phones were recently used to set off bombs.  (As I  
heard it, one of the bombs contained a SIM chip and was wired to go  
off when the SIM chip was called.)

So now, there are complicated rules concerning the purchase of phones  
and prepaid time.  The merchant is supposed to physically verify the  
customer's address by going to the address listed and seeing if the  
customer is there.  Just imagine: A whole new business-process market !

Of course, that doesn't mean that ID is actually required in  
practice:  Many companies buy large quantities of chips or time and  
hand them out liberally to employees.  And I'm sure that the address- 
verification services are not all reliable. Kinda like the TSA.

Esther Dyson