New Delhi, Feb 19 (IANS) Cellular service providers have been given time till March 31 to set in place the equipment required to bar calls from mobile phones that do not have the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) - a unique 15-digit identity code for handsets, the government said Thursday.
IMEI helps the authorities identify the handset used to make a call on the GSM network, while the electronic serial number (ESN) is used for the CDMA network.

“Government had directed on October 6, 2008 all access service providers to make provision of equipment identification register (EIR) in their networks, so that calls without IMEI, ESN or that with IMEI/ESN with all zero are not processed and rejected,” Minister of State for Communications and IT Jyotiraditya Scindia said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

Mobile service providers have now been given time till Mar 31 to comply with the directive and submit report compliance by Apr 15, Scindia added.

The home ministry last month had directed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to re-exercise the verification of SIMs and to rule out the use of mobile handsets without having proper IMEI or ESN numbers.

DoT had Jan 6 asked telecom operators to disconnect handsets that do not have IMEI.

The government’s move came after investigating agencies found that terrorists have been using these mobile phones for their communication purposes.

The decision would affect nearly 25 million handsets, with most of them being Chinese-made.