newstracking
Much to people’s relief, they will now be able to block and track their lost or stolen mobile phones across the Indian subcontinent with the rollout of a new tracking system by the government this week, a senior government official informed.
Technology development body Centre for Development of Telematics (CDoT) has been running the pilot of the CEIR system in some of the telecom circles, including Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and North East region, and the system is now ready for pan-India deployment, an anonymous DTI officer informed PTI “CEIR system is scheduled for pan-India launch on May 17,” the official said. When approached, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Project Board at CDoT Rajkumar Upadhyay could not confirm the date but assured that the technology is ready for pan-India deployment. He further told that the system was ready and now it would be deployed across India in this quarter itself. CDoT has been able to add features to check the use of cloned mobile phones across all telecom networks. The government has now made it compulsory to disclose IMEI — a 15-digit unique numeric identifier — of mobile devices before their sale in India. Telecom operators and CEIR system will have visibility into IMEI number of the device and mobile number linked to it, and the information is being used in some states to track your lost or stolen mobiles through CEIR.
“One of the common practices is that miscreants change IMEI number of stolen mobile phones which prevents tracking and blocking of such handsets. The CEIR will be able to block any cloned mobile phones on the network with the help of various databases,” Upadhyay shared. The basic purpose of CEIR is to ease reporting of stolen and lost mobiles and block the use of mobiles all over the country. This will further discourage the theft of mobile phones as it will now enable the tracing of the stolen and lost mobiles to the police, detection of cloned or counterfeit mobiles while restricting the use of such cloned mobiles.
Recently, Karnataka Police had recovered and handed over more than 2,500 lost mobile phones to their respective owners using the CEIR system. Apple has already come up with a system to track lost mobile phones with the help of it’s Apple iD but major issues have been around android mobile phones.Hopefully, with the new system in place, the cases of phone stealing will be mitigated to an extent.
