Indian operators should start blocking several million mobile phones starting from today, December 1st, as part of the government decision to ban handsets without a valid IMEI. According to earlier estimates, there were as many as 25 million handsets being used without an IMEI number, though that number shrank as the deadline announced by the government approached.
While operators have been offering a reprogramming service to insert a valid IMEI into the handsets, it is thought that there are still millions of potentially illegal handsets in use.
Most affected are users with low-end handsets made by Chinese companies which wanted to save money by skipping the IMEI programming stage.
And in case you wonder what’s the idea behind the move, the Indian government quotes security reasons, as handsets without IMEI numbers are harder to track and could be used by terrorists…
[Via: CellularNews]