DoT sees red on IMEI issue

The  department of telecommunications (DoT) has expressed its displeasure to telecom companies that have not been able to keep their date with the 6 January 6 deadline for barring cellphones with no IMEI numbers or invalid ones.

Though it has extended the deadline to 15 April, it has made clear that telecom operators who take their own time to adhere to the extended deadline will be barred from taking on new customers after its expiry.

Moreover, it has said that telecom companies that are yet to respond to the DoT's directive would find themselves paying a daily fine till the new deadline.

The DoT has instructed telecommunications companies to install equipment identification registers (EIRs) by 24 January, failing which they would be liable to pay financial penalties, and may be debarred from add any new subscribers.

Reports said MTNL, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel, BSNL and Tata Teleservices have informed DoT of their progress in installing the EIRs, while quoting unnamed sources as saying that other operators such as Idea, Vodafone, HFCL, Shyam, BPL, Spice, Aircel and Dishnet are yet to provide information on their level of compliance.

The financial penalty is a per-day fine that would double every 15 days and will continue till 15 April.

The Economic Times said that around 25 million cellphone users in India use cheap non-branded Chinese cellphones, most of which do not have the mandatory IMEI numbers, or instead have fictitious ones.

Telecom companies say these customers can ill-afford the new cellphones, though DoT is still adamant about implementing the directive in the wake of the necessity of an IMEI number to keep terror and security risks under check. Reports estimated that cancelling handsets without IMEI numbers would impact around one per cent of handsets used in the country.

IMEI numbers are the 16 digit code that comes embedded with every mobile handset and used to identify the handset on the operator's network.