The Indian government is set to roll out a tracking system this week, allowing people to block and track their lost or stolen mobile phones across the country.
According to a senior government official, the Centre for Department of Telematics (CDoT) has already conducted a pilot of the CEIR system in several telecom circles, including Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and the North East region.
Now, the system is ready for pan-India deployment. The CDoT has also added features to check the use of cloned mobile phones across all telecom networks.
In India, the disclosure of IMEI – a 15-digit unique numeric identifier – of mobile devices is mandatory before their sale, and mobile networks will have access to the list of approved IMEI numbers to prevent the entry of unauthorized mobile phones on their network.
With the help of the CEIR system, telecom operators will have visibility into the IMEI number of the device and the mobile number linked to it, enabling the tracking of lost or stolen mobiles through CEIR.
“The CEIR will be able to block any cloned mobile phones on the network with the help of various databases,” said Rajkumar Upadhyay, CEO and Chairman Project Board at CDoT.
The CEIR system aims to ease reporting of stolen and lost mobiles, block the use of mobiles all over the country, trace stolen and lost mobiles to the police, detect cloned or counterfeit mobiles, restrict the use of such cloned mobiles, and protect the interests of consumers by making them aware of information related to fake and cloned mobile phones.
Recently, the Karnataka Police used the CEIR system to recover and return over 2,500 lost mobile phones to their owners. While Apple has a system to track lost mobile phones with the help of Apple ID, Android mobile phones have presented major issues.
-with agency inputs
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