November 26, 2008	Wednesday	Ziqa'ad 27, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 25: The telecom authorities have marked Karachi as the city that witnessed the highest number of cellphone theft and snatchings in 2008 in the country, putting a question mark over the claims and performance of the law-enforcers.

In the annual report for 2008, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) speaks about non-stop handset theft and snatchings which, it observes, were widely reported in pure urban set-ups, including Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

However, the figures put on record by the telecom regulator indicate the crime has been proceeding at a staggering pace in Karachi in 2008 compared to other major cities of the country, demanding immediate and effective measures from the institutions concerned.

The city remained at the top on the chart with half of the total mobile phones snatchings or theft in the country.

“Till 2008, 47.53 per cent of all complaints are received from Karachi, 7.03 per cent from Lahore and 6.65 per cent from Rawalpindi/Islamabad,” says the report in its chapter titled Countering the mobile phone handset theft.It says that in the last few years, cellphone theft has been on the rise, badly affecting the growth of the telecom sector. Though the PTA cited measures mainly relying on technology, the reported number of cases of the street crimes required steps to curb the menace, mainly through improved performance by the law-enforcement agencies.

“To deal with the threat, the PTA introduced an IMEI system and implemented it in October 2006,” it says. “The PTA made the system available with the help of the CPLC and the industry. The system registers complaints for both blocking and unblocking of the mobile handsets.

The authority takes action on a complaint after its verification.”

However, the measures claimed by the PTA to deal with the threat have yet to win the trust of the cellular phone subscribers and the affected individuals, as after more than two years, the IMEI system has failed to receive an inspiring response.

“After introducing the IMEI system, 254,084 complaints have been received for blocking of handsets and all of them were catered to. On average, 13,152 handsets per month were blocked during the year,” says the report.

It highlights issues regarding subscribers’ data and blames the cellular companies, which defied the rules while designing their distribution plans and expanded their sales without much focus on verification of costumers’ antecedents, which resulted in increased concerns of the law enforcement agencies.

In a revised standing operating procedure, the PTA cites new measures taken by the telecom regulator, which will come into effect next year.

The report for the first time defines the new procedure designed by the authority in consultation with the cellular companies to sell inactive SIMs (subscriber identity modules) from January 2009.

“The sale outlets that are the franchises, retailers and mobile phone company customer service centres will sell inactive SIMs,” it says.

“After the sale, the call centre operator of the mobile phone company will make a call to the customer and will ask a few questions to verify his particulars. If the answers are correct, the SIM will be activated.”

The report also highlights a recent campaign of the mobile phone companies following directives of the PTA, which led to the fact that the data of mobile subscribers’ antecedents for connections sold up to August 31, 2008 had been verified through the National Database and Registration Authority and a total of 7.8 million connections had been blocked.

“As a policy, 10 connections on a single CNIC are allowed per mobile operator. The excess connections on a single CNIC have been regularised through a media campaign. So far 2.6 million excess connections have been blocked,” adds the PTA report.