The move is part of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority's (TRA) "My Number, My Identity" campaign which requires every mobile phone user to re-confirm their details.
Registration is expected to begin on July 17 and run for 18 months after which unregistered handsets could be blocked.
"This regulatory step is highly commendable, and we fully support the TRA for its efforts to protect customer interest and enhance customer experience," said Farid Faraidooni, the chief commercial officer for du.
"We are working proactively with agencies to automate the process, further simplifying the registration process.
"We have taken every measure to make the registration process for Sim cards as simple as possible for our customers, so that they can enjoy a smooth, hassle-free registration no matter where they are in the UAE.
Du has more than 250 outlets across the country where customers will be able to visit once they have been notified.
A valid passport, residency visa and Emirates or GCC identity card are required for the registration process.
The TRA is carrying out the re-registration to link Sim owners with users to prevent misuse of the cards.
Etisalat customers are advised to visit one of their carrier's outlets once registration opens.
On June 30 we experienced a service issue which may have affected some of our customers in certain parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India,” said Sandeep Saihgal, managing director of Research In Motion (Rim) Middle East.
“This issue is now fully resolved and all services are operating as normal. We apologise to any customers in these regions who may have been inconvenienced.”
The service difficulties struck both the Etisalat and du networks, though there were no reports of voice calls being affected.
Du said in a statement on Saturday night that the disruption was caused by “technical challenges” reported by RIM. The statement continued: “We would like to inform our BlackBerry users that they might have experienced degradation in their BlackBerry services due to technical challenges as reported by RIM.
“Wireless service providers and device resellers may experience delays in using BlackBerry administration websites, creating subscriber accounts, or provisioning services for subscribers.”
Du said its technical team was working with RIM to resolve the matter as soon as possible, and apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused.
Etisalat announced that its BlackBerry services had returned to normal.
The operator said in a statement: “As stated earlier by Rim, the delay was caused due to Rim’s service issues, but the BlackBerry service has now been restored.
“Etisalat apologises to its BlackBerry customers for the inconvenience caused due to disruption.”
BlackBerry user Fatma Al Bannai, an Emirati from Dubai who works in IT quality control, said: “I’ve been talking to some of my friends who have du and some who have Etisalat, and they were both down for quite a few hours yesterday. They weren’t receiving any messages on BBM and their emails were not coming in, basically the service wasn’t functioning.
“I called Etisalat and there was an automatic message saying they had been experiencing some problems. I believe it was a nationwide issue that lasted until the early hours of the morning. There was no prior warning.”
She said she was disappointed that RIM had not issued a statement earlier when the problems first emerged.
“At first I didn’t know if it was just my phone or if it was everyone else, so if they’d issued a statement we would have known that the whole country didn’t have the service.”
The disruption is the latest in a series of problems to hit RIM.
The Canadian company's share price has plummeted in the face of fierce competition from Apple and the makers of Android smartphones, and it has just announced large-scale job cuts and a delay to the launch of its BlackBerry 10 platform.
Last October BlackBerry services in the UAE went down for several days because of a massive outage that affected millions of users around the world.Some users complained about the latest disruption on Twitter.
A Dubai resident who tweets under the handle @Psyched! said: “Rim jus keeps diggin its own hole.”
@ReadMore said: “Another disruption of BlackBerry services in UAE. Which number is that? Too many disruptions to count if you ask me.”
There was no mention of the problem on RIM’s official Twitter page.
Ms Al Bannai said she was becoming a bit fed up with BlackBerry because of the problems with the network, but would not switch to another make of smartphone because all her friends used the RIM messaging network.
Etisalat announced on Tuesday that it has nearly completed the procedures to begin SIM card registration for its mobile phone users in line with the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority’s (TRA) ‘My Number, My Identity’ campaign.
As per the directive of the TRA, mobile phone subscribers in the UAE are required to update their profile in the operator database and ensure all SIM holders are the same as the registered owner of the SIM card. Customers will need to register their SIM cards by submitting an application form along with valid identification documents including the passport with valid residency, Emirates or GCC ID card. For business and government customers, the requirement is a valid establishment card.
Starting from July 17, Etisalat’s customers will be able to choose from over 100 points of sale across the UAE to process their SIM card registration. Registration of the SIM card is only required once, and all unregistered SIM cards will be cancelled once the registration period expires.
Commenting on the registration campaign, Saleh Abdulla Al Abdooli, Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat, said: “The ‘My Number, My Identity’ campaign aims primarily at providing the necessary protection to subscribers and enabling them to procure all services easily. Etisalat has fully harnessed its resources to complete this process successfully for its customers through its points of sale. This campaign is particularly important for subscribers because it prevents any unauthorised or criminal usage of SIM cards and helps in curbing legal or social violations besides reducing frauds that have been noticed during the last few years.”
