Mobiles Sans IMEI Numbers Face Disconnec

Almost a yearlong saga of banning non-IMEI laden, cheap Chinese phones still goes on. Following the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, the government had directed the cellphone companies to bar mobile phones with no or spoofed IMEIs from their networks. That, however, was not strongly implemented with a number of flip-flops from both - the government and the cellphone manufacturers.

Almost a year on, in its latest move, the Indian Cellular Association (ICA) has announced that cellphones without IMEI will face disconnections by December. The announcement comes following a DoT directive where mobile operators were asked to disallow calls from such handsets to be completed. There are an estimated 25 million such handsets in circulation across the country - owing to which replacement of all such handsets is a difficult proposition. The only way out as the ICA has figured out is to make people aware about the advantages of a using phone with a valid IMEI and request users of all such phones to migrate to another phone before the cut-ff date. In fact, the ICA had started a countrywide campaign in order to make the transition from a non-IMEI phone to a legal one smooth.

Apart from being a security concern, these phones had also started eating onto shares of genuine manufacturers who were unable to compete with unbranded Chinese phones in terms of price and features. Quality wise though, it's a no contest.

Source: http://www.techtree.com/