Interfax reports that from September 1 onwards all Shanghai mobile phone users will need to register with their ID card:

All mobile phone and Xiaolingtong (PHS) subscribers in Shanghai, new and old, will have to register their legal names with city authorities beginning September 1, the Shanghai Communications Administration and the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB) said on Friday.

“We have tightened control in order to protect mobile phone users from malicious and fraudulent SMS (short messaging service) messages,” Hu Yonglong, Vice Director of the Shanghai Communications Administration, told Interfax.

Mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers will now need to show their Citizen Identity cards and register their legal names when buying a new SIM card. Telecom operators will be required to confirm and register the legal names of new subscribers in a database.

Existing mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers must registered their legal names with authorities at designated locations across the city within three months from September 1.

Let’s wait and see if it is just an announcement or if it will be really enforced. If it should be enforced I expect that people who use mobile phones for illegal activities will buy their numbers outside Shanghai, or will give poor unemployed workers a few kuai to register in their names. And also I do not expect the amount of spam SMS to reduce: I get about 3-5 per day, and most are from China Mobile anyway!