Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the Mobile Security should be our National Priority because the mobile handset became an important tool for all online activities. He was addressing the gathering, yesterday, after launching a Web Portal called ‘Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR)’ for the customers of Delhi to facilitate blocking and tracing of Stolen/Lost Mobile Phones in Delhi.
Prasad said that Government has decided to give 5G Spectrum for trial to all operators in the country. This may take few years to launch it fully all over the country, he added. UPI Payments interface has become primary means for all online money transactions in the country and we need to make it a Global beacon for making Indian rupee much stronger.
The Minister said that this is the age of communication and communication is power, and this is the age of technology and the technology is power. He further said that while we exploit use and make optimum involvement of technology for development the equally smart criminals induce technology for their own end. Therefore, we need a technology that safeguards our interests, he added.
Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Aadhar is a digital identity to confirm our physical identity and the digital India is for digital inclusion. Digital India is empowering ordinary Indian to the power of technology which is leading to digital inclusion, he said.
Industry should be more innovative and Indian players should imbibe new innovations in IT, he added.
International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is supposed to be a unique identity of a mobile phone device. A phone with one/two slots of SIM Card is programmed with one/two IMEI number as the case may be. IMEI number being programmable, some miscreants do reprogram the IMEI number, which results in cloning of IMEI causing multiple devices with same IMEI number. As on date, there are many cases of clones/duplicated IMEI handsets in the network, the release said.
If such IMEI is blocked, a large number of mobile phones will get blocked being handsets with same IMEI causing inconvenience to many genuine customers. Thus, there is a need to eliminate duplicate/fake IMEI mobile phones from the network, it said.
Accordingly, this project called Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) system has been undertaken by the DoT for addressing security, theft and other concerns including reprogramming of mobile handsets, it added.
