Baku, Azerbaijan, May 19
By Huseyn Valiyev – Trend:
Azerbaijan will strengthen the fight against cloning of IMEI codes of mobile devices, a source in the country's telecommunications market told Trend.
In order to eliminate these problems, the experience of Turkey is being studied, where the method of binding the IMEI code to a specific number is applied, and this doesn’t allow phones with similar IMEI code to operate in the network.
The source said earlier that the introduction of a practice of centralized sale of Sim-cards made it possible to decrease illegal sales of mobile devices. As a result, the existing negative factors in this area were eliminated by some 85 percent.
Today, the purchased subscriber's mobile number cannot be activated until the subscriber information is entered into the centralized database, the source said.
In accordance with the government's decision to amend the procedure for the sale of Sim cards, their registration is carried out in a centralized manner since Feb.1, 2017 and upon the same rules for all operators, which allows eliminating existing shortcomings in this area and systematizing sales.
When a Sim card is sold, the information about a subscriber is entered into the database of mobile operators (Azercell, Azerfon and Bakcell), as well as the information and computing center of the Transport, Communications and High Technologies Ministry of Azerbaijan.
The registration system of IMEI codes of mobile devices began operating in Azerbaijan on May 1, 2013. The imported mobile devices for personal use (in the networks of mobile operators of Azerbaijan) must be registered within 30 days. Registration of the mobile devices is available through the portal of "Electronic government" (https://www.e-gov.az/en ), eGovPay payment terminals and at https://e-govpay.az/?lang=en.
Registration is carried out within 24 hours from the moment of application. The cost of registration of IMEI-code of mobile device for personal use is five manats, and for commercial sale - 1.6 manats.
In general, at the end of January-April 2018, about 270,000 of IMEI-codes of mobile devices were registered in the system, which is almost 10 percent higher than for the same period last year. The total number of IMEI codes registered through the e-government portal has exceeded 2.46 million since the launch of the system.
(1.7 manats = 1 USD on May 18)
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