New EIR Solution for Operators
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Nov 18, 2008 1451 hrs IST

In the interest of national security, the DoT recently issued a directive that telecom companies must block calls made from handsets which do not have valid and traceable equipment identity numbers.

To do so, mobile operators have three months to set up and activate equipment identification registers (EIR), which contain a database of all valid mobile equipment on the network, inventoried by their International Mobile Equipment Identification (IMEI) number. Using an EIR, mobile operators are able to track and log all valid equipment and block handsets with invalid or missing IMEIs from operating on the network.

Due to their untraceable nature, phones that are missing or have invalid IMEI's are often used in criminal activities that could threaten national security and place subscribers at risk. According to the Communications Fraud Control Association, fraud losses range from $54.4 billion to $60 billion a year, and this cost is in addition to the negative impact fraud can have on the use of new services and the intangible cost of damage to the mobile operator's brand.

Taking advantage of this scenario, Airwide Solutions has announced that its AirGuard EIR solution is immediately available in India.

AirGuard EIR is currently being used by around 50 operators worldwide to control the increasing threat of fraudulent and untraceable mobilephone activity. It layers anti-fraud capabilities with handset anti-theft which enables operators to prevent stolen or fraudulent handsets from working on their network within seconds of detection.



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