JOIN USSoon, you will be able to block your lost cellphone, and not just the SIM card, but the service may come at a cost.
Telecom giants have told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that a fee should be charged for locking the GSM-specific International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number or the CDMA-specific Electronic Serial Number (ESN) of the handsets that are lost.
The industry was responding to the TRAI’s proposed system to block stolen or lost handsets to discourage theft of cell phones. Though companies are now blocking SIM cards upon receipt of complaints from mobile subscribers, there is no mechanism to block and disable handsets.
IMEI is a unique serial number assigned to every handset and can be found inside the instrument below the battery or by typing *#06# in most GSM devices. In CDMA handsets, the unique identification number is called the electronic serial number (ESN).
As the facility to disable handsets involves costs of administration, customer care and creation of hardware and software, a nominal charge should be collected from mobile subscribers, Reliance Communication said in a letter to the TRAI. Bharti Airtel, too, has proposed a fee and said customers should be charged based on the estimated operating expenses and the number of lost handset requests made to the operators.
Bharti has also suggested that the TRAI could come up with a revenue-sharing arrangement among the service providers, and a third-party could maintain a central equipment identity register (EIR).
An EIR is a database deployed in the network of service providers which stores the IMEI or the ESN of the handsets. The database will be maintained by the government, the regulator or a third party and it could be shared among the service providers. The regulator is currently fine-tuning the mechanism to create this database, and will also decide the mode of funding this project.
If the EIRs of service providers were shared through a centralised database, the lost or stolen mobile could be stopped from reuse in all networks, sources in the TRAI told Deccan Herald.
In case of a complaint regarding theft of a handset, the service provider can flag the IMEI number of the handset and block the handset in its own network. The TRAI would also decide whether to collect the fee from subscribers or not and if yes, how much it should be for locking the lost or stolen cell phone, sources said.
Ericsson, the world’s largest telecom gear maker, has urged the regulator to make re-programming of the IMEI numbers a criminal offence. The TRAI, which is determined to end the illegal handset market, did not have the exact number of mobile phones lost or missing every month, but industry experts say the number is alarming.