India to shut down 25 million mobile lines in January due security concerns

India to shut down 25 million mobile lines in January due security concerns

Following recent terrorist attacks in the country, India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) instructed mobile operators to disconnect all handsets which do not have an IMEI number from January 6th of 2009. As a result, as many as 25 million mobile phones could be cut off in the “world’s largest democracy.”



The official DoT wording goes like this:

In the interest of national security, all cellular mobile service providers in unified access 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.

However, this won’t be an easy task as it may seem. According to an unnamed senior official at a telco, there are so many combinations of non-genuine IMEI numbers that it is extremely difficult to block them. “Network upgradation is required to block all such calls and not all of our multiple equipment vendors are equipped to do it,” he/she added.