Talk:Germany/@comment-77.138.30.126-20170818204502/@comment-24682153-20170823122500

Hi Ipswich. I agree with most of your points. I don't know whether flashing your ID document through a cam is so much worse than doing it at the point of sale (POS). This way they have still the online SIM card market and you can do the registration even from abroad. For all other strict registration countries you need to go there on location and don't have the chance to buy a SIM e.g. on eBay. The problem is, that the web/video/online ID is not working very well so far and not for everybody....

It's not the government, but the operators that have messed it up. Authorities wanted registration at point of purchase. Aldi, Lidl and others said no and the supermarket brands are very popular. Then government said: OK, you can do it otherwise, if it's as secure as POS registration. Then the operators opted for the video way. The regulator issued some guidelines how to do it and they realized they can't have thousands of IDs in their data base. So they made a typical 80/20 approach. It's OK when you come from Russia, but not from Samoa. Aldi closed its mobile brand in Belgium after SIM card registration became mandatory there last year. So this was the only way to save supermarket or online brands in Germany.

I agree that e.g. the Polish system is better as they register existing SIM cards as well. But in Poland most resellers are subsidiaries of the networks. Now users from abroad are complaining that you need to physically go to Poland or their SIM will be switched off....