Talk:Peru/@comment-201.230.248.154-20160405222752/@comment-24682153-20160405231802

Hi. May I ask you if you get your SIM from an official store, registered on your name, passport etc. or on the black market? Did you have to fill out an official Spanish form like this? Did you give your fingerprint for biometric registration, which is now mandatory? Or was it pre-registered or on someone else?

Movistar, the Peruvian Tourist Office and forums (like this here of Expats) have stated that only registrations with biometric verficiation based on DNI (local IDs) are officially allowed. Foreigners don't have a chance to get a prepaid SIM in a legal way. These measures are done because of surging crime rates involving unregistered SIM cards in the country,

But there is a huge black market on the streets of Lima and you can get pre-registered SIM cards for S./5 on a fake or somebody elses name. Here is a report in Spanish about it. The operators just paid a hefty fine for allowing unregistered SIMs on their network. The regulator has threatened to switch them off. This makes it a dilemma for on this WIKI: Officially, it's not allowed - "unofficially" it's done and seen as a problem by many Peruvians.

So generally we follow the official policy here and say: no way. But it's still general practice in Peru to swap SIM cards and sell them anonymously. I decided to take Peru off the list for the meantime and check the situation on location later in May. I can imagine that we re-add Peru as a "greylist" country, but disobeying official policy we need to explain exactly why. We need to show the risk and the consequences. And we have to say thats illegal.

I hope you understand.