Telstra was the first mobile carrier in Australia to introduce International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) after years of criticism of the telecommunications industry over a failure to act on the issue of mobile phone theft.
Before IMEI blocking was introduced on August 15 this year, mobile phones were being stolen at a rate of more than 2,000 per week. Since then the incidence of lost and stolen handsets has fallen 23 percent, according to Telstra.
"There were a host of technical and legal reasons which Telstra had to work through," Telstra Mobile external affairs manager Chris Newlan told ZDNet Australia , explaining why the system wasn't introduced earlier. One of the issues he raised was the ability to duplicate an IEMI number, claiming Telstra didn't want to turn of turning off an innocent party.
"We needed to be confident the technology was in the best interests of all our customers, so we spent a long time working out the issues surrounding this technology," said Newlan, adding there were a number of legal issues with implementing the system in addition to the technical issues involved.
Between August 15 and November 9, Telstra alone blocked 10,009 mobiles from its GSM network. Of these, 3,134 were reported lost and 6,875 were reported stolen. A total of 1167 handsets were later unblocked at the request of customers when they found their handset.
The figures show mobile phones are most likely to be stolen from cars (28 percent) or social venues (20 percent). However, nine percent of stolen mobiles went missing from the home, and eight percent of reported thefts were at work.
Victoria accounted for 32 percent of blocked phones, while NSW accounted for 27 percent and Queensland 18 percent.
