Calcutta, April 14: The Indian Cellular Association (ICA) has suggested that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) consult with the British, Russian and other European operators to create a central equipment identifying register (CEIR) to prevent theft of mobile phones in the country. The ICA is willing to be a controlling agency and ensure participation from operators and retailers.

Trai had issued a consultation paper in January and requested for feedback from all stakeholders.

The ICA is the apex body representing cellular manufacturers, dealers, distributors, retailers and consumers.

ICA national president Pankaj Mohindroo said, “We recommend detailed discussions with the UK-based Global Mobile Suppliers Association, the Brussels-based Mobile Manufacturers Forum and European and Russian operators to device a method to link the CEIR database. Since most of the handsets come from Europe, creating a common pool should not be difficult. Also, Qualcomm should be consulted for CDMA handsets.”

In its consultation paper, Trai had suggested the necessity to build a database of relevant phones which need to be tracked. It is estimated that around 3,30,000 mobiles are stolen every year in countries where statistics is available. In the UK alone, around 200 phones are stolen daily.

Most of these phones make their way to India, Pakistan and African countries. There is an international market for stolen mobiles, though their import/export is difficult to track.

“The problem of theft confronts us during supply chain management and logistics,” explains Mohindroo.

There are, however, a number of issues creating the CEIR. “The Indian consumer normally buys handsets separately and the service provider has little control. The data collected should be made available online to all concerned. We should also deliberate whether this database can be extended from stolen handsets to a broader scenario of legally imported handsets from authorised channels,” said Mohindroo.

The grey market, which currently accounts for 14 million handsets, also poses a major problem.