India Delays Plans Which Could Have Shut-Down 25 Million Mobile Phones

India's Department of Telecom (DoT) has reportedly delayed the implementation of an plan to block all mobile phones without an official IMEI number - which could have cut some 25 million handsets off the mobile networks. The ban on the handsets was due to come into effect this week.

"The order is still pending with the (telecom) ministry. Till then, no action will be taken on these handsets," a DoT official, who did not wish to be identified, told the Economic Times newspaper.

There have been much commentary in local media over the past few months - largely blaming grey imports of handsets from China which are not set up with individualised IMEI numbers.

"In the interest of national security, all cellular mobile service providers in unified acess 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," DoT said in a letter to the mobile network operators in October - giving them six months to apply the necessary systems to block the phones.

On the web: Economic Times

Posted to the site on 7th January 2009