14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest news on the Web, mobile phone operators in India have announced recently that all mobile phones in the country that do not have a unique IMEI serial number, or which make use of Chinese style blank IMEIs will be aggressively disconnected in about ten days. The measure was ordered by the country’s regulator as a result of the recent terrorist attacks in India, so it comes as a security move.
Previous reports show that there are around 30 million mobile phones in the country that could be affected by the recently announced directive, which means that about 8 percent of the total subscribers in India own such a phone.
As many of you might already know, the IMEI should be a 15-digit serial that is unique to each mobile device. According to the latest reports in the country, some operators have detected that sometimes up to 1000 mobile phones share the same serial number.
The serial number of the device has no effect on the billing, as it is made through the SIM identity, but it can be used by the police to check for the person that made a phone call from a specific device. Given the fact that the handset transmits the IMEI as soon as it is connected to a network, the operator is able to block the access to that handset, a move that sometimes prevents a stolen mobile phone from being reused when a new SIM card is placed inside.
The mobile phone carriers in the country received orders to block the errant handsets before, yet there was little progress, and now the mandate from the Department of Telecommunications is meant to speed things up. According to the news, operators will try to contact the users who would be affected by the move so as to advise them on the issue.