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Following recent terrorist attacks in the country, India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) instructed mobile operators to disconnect all handsets which do not have an IMEI number from January 6th of 2009. As a result, as many as 25 million mobile phones could be cut off in the “world’s largest democracy.”
The official DoT wording goes like this:
In the interest of national security, all cellular mobile service providers in unified access service licences (UASL) are hereby directed to make provisions for EIR so that calls without IMEI or with IMEI consisting of all zeroes are not processed or rejected.
However, this won’t be an easy task as it may seem. According to an unnamed senior official at a telco, there are so many combinations of non-genuine IMEI numbers that it is extremely difficult to block them. “Network upgradation is required to block all such calls and not all of our multiple equipment vendors are equipped to do it,” he/she added.
[Via: Cellular-News]
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
