Cellphones without IMEI to be disconnected soon: INDIA

March 26th, 2009

Indian govt has finally given a 31st March deadline to telecom operators to disconnect fake chinese devices without IMEI. The decision was taken long back and this time there is no extension to the deadline. With Polls coming up and concerns that terrorists might be using these unregistered devices the Indian govt wants to be absolutely sure.

Though I have my own doubts on how this would affect terrorists communication as a Nokia or Sony Ericsson is available at every other shop in town! And no one really maintains a log of who bought which IMEI. There is a good resale market on eBay aswell for used mobiles and any of these can be used by terrorists.

However this move would certainly cut competition for leading mobile manufactuers who face tough time matching up with the cheap Chinese devices.

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Indian govt working on strategy to deal with fake mobile handsets

December 22nd, 2008

We already saw the fight Nokia is putting up to fight the chinese mobiles. In the last 1-2 year s these handsets have flooded the local markets and ruined the low-end cream that the industry was growing on since the last 5 years.

And here comes the fight from the Indian govt to tackle the unbranded phones without legal IMEI. It is believed that these phones are widely used by terrorists. Earlier the govt had directed the telecos to disconnect mobile handsets on their network without proper IMEI by 6th Jan 2009. However the deadline has now been expanded till 31 March 2009.

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