A campaign to crackdown on people making nuisance calls as well as hoax calls to emergency services was launched in Bahrain on Sunday.

It will require all mobile phone owners in the kingdom registering with their operators before the end of the year, said a report in the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Telecommunication Regulatory Authority general director Alan Horne said that there were around 600,000 Batelco and Zain mobile telephone owners whose names were not registered.

People who use pre-paid cards will be asked to register their telephones at Batelco and Zain offices, effective September 1.

Those who fail to do so will only be able to receive and make emergency calls as of January 1.

They will have to turn up at one of the operators' offices with identification.

That means that more than 5,000 people a day will have to go to the 18 Batelco and 11 Zain outlets over the next four months.

The number of nuisance calls from unregistered mobile telephones is increasing and there are currently over 500 people waiting to come before the courts for this anti-social behaviour, said Public Security deputy chief Brigadier Tariq Murabak bin Dayna on Sunday at the launch of the campaign at the Gulf Hotel's Gulf Convention Centre.

He said one man, whose wife had decided to go shopping when he asked her not to, telephoned Seef Mall with a bomb threat to thwart her.

Batelco's corporate affairs general manager Nadia Mohammed Hussain and Zain's research and pre-paid acquisition specialist Ali Hareth Darwish said that their shops would be providing dedicated staff to deal with the registration.

People will also be able to register at outlets such as cold stores, which sell mobile chips.

Those who are unsure whether their telephones are already registered can check with their operator by calling their company call centre, said officials.

'People who have unregistered mobile telephones and use them to make nuisance calls are a growing problem around the world and many countries are now clamping down on this with registration schemes,' said Horne.

Cold stores and resellers of mobile phone SIM cards have been blamed for contributing to the problem.

Both Batelco and Zain said they have already registered all of their mobile phone subscribers, including pre-paid customers, but said the problem lay with resellers.

Batelco board secretary and spokesman Ahmad Al Janahi said the company's customer service staff always asked for proper identification before handing over new connections.

'This is not something new. We have always been doing it. Identification is required for all services including pre-paid services,' he said.

He, however, said that cold stores and other resellers often ignored instructions to always ask for identification.

'There is no real control over anyone who sells connections without the proper paperwork,' he added.- TradeArabia News Service