India bans mobiles without ‘code’
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India has banned imports of mobile phones which do not have a unique international identification code.
Cheap mobile handsets without the code and imported primarily from China and Taiwan are popular in India.
Mobile sales have grown fast in India
Over 25 million such handsets are now in use in India, according to the federal telecom ministry.
Last year, Indian intelligence agencies had said phones without the code were being used by terrorist groups in attacks in the country.
Time-consuming
The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number is a 15-digit code which appears on the operator’s network whenever a call is made.
The absence of this number makes it impossible to trace either the caller or the phone. It is also makes it impossible to get call details for these handsets.
Orders to detect handsets without the identification numbers were issued last year but some mobile phone operators asked for more time to identify these phones.
They said the time and software required to identify these phones was time-consuming.
Priced between $60 and $120, the cheap handsets have a big market among rural and semi-urban consumers who want connectivity at cheaper cost.
There are over 380 million mobile phone users in India.
The president of the Indian Cellular Association, Pankaj Mohandroo, has been campaigning against Chinese-made phones for years.
He called the government announcement as a “partial solution” saying the problem of millions of handsets in circulation has not been tackled.
“We have demanded immediate disconnection of services to such mobile phones but that has not happened,” he observed.
The government has ordered that no new connections be provided to such handsets.
India has also announced a partial ban on the import of Chinese toys that do not meet international standards until January 2010.
India may soon ban import of ‘Made in China’ mobile phones that lack the unique IMEI identification number, which helps authorities track people carrying these devices.
Mobiles phones without International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number are considered a grave security threat and concerns had been raised over their usage after terrorist attacks like the one in Mumbai in November last year.
Despite the security threat, no government agency has till now approached the Commerce Ministry for a ban on import of such phones from China, a top source said today.
“Neither Home Ministry nor telecom companies have written to the Commerce Ministry seeking such a ban,” the source said.
The Commerce Ministry can temporarily suspend import of such phones and make it mandatory for the importer to comply with IMEI requirement.
The Home Ministry, the source said, may soon write to the Commerce Ministry on the issue.
There are about 250 lakh Chinese handsets that are being used by consumers in the country. GSM service providers, including Airtel and Vodafone, have already said that they would deny connectivity to cell phones without IMEI number.
Concerned over the national security, the Department of Telecommunications had earlier asked operators to disconnect services to handset that does not have an IMEI number.
IMEI is a 15-digit code which appears on the operator’s network whenever a call is made.
The Indian government has banned the import of mobile phones without an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number, and has ordered operators to block calls from phones without an IMEI from next month..
The Indian government has banned the import of mobile phones without an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number, and has ordered operators to block calls from phones without an IMEI from next month..
The IMEI is a unique code that identifies a mobile device on a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) network, and is usually programmed into the phone by the manufacturer.
A notification earlier this week from the Indian government’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade has prohibited the import of mobile handsets that do not have an IMEI, or have an IMEI consisting entirely of zeros.
A large number of mobile phones that are sold in India are either spurious or unbranded, often sold at low prices without bills or warranty. Terrorists have been found to use phones without IMEI, as they prevent identification, according to security agencies.
The spurious phones also represent a significant loss of revenue to mobile phone vendors who are targeting the country’s booming mobile phone market.
The Indian government told the country’s parliament in December that the Department of Telecommunications had directed cellular mobile service providers to make provisions for the authentication of mobile handsets with an IMEI number for GSM networks and Electronic Serial Number (ESN) for CDMA (code -division multiple access) networks.
In a letter to service providers in April, the Ministry of Communications & IT recognized that some of the users of phones without IMEI or zeros in place of the IMEI, were “genuine innocent subscribers”. The ministry approved in that letter a proposal by the service providers for a Genuine IMEI Implant (GII) program that programs genuine IMEI on mobile handsets.
The GII program is being offered by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in association with Mobile Standard Alliance of India.
The last date for the software implants will be the end of this month. On that date the EIR (Equipment Identity Register) used by the operators will have to reject all calls made from a phone without an IMEI or with all zeros in place of a genuine IMEI, according to the letter from the ministry, a copy of which has been posted on the COAI web site.
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