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Tanzania to televise fake phones' switch off exercise

Xinhua, June 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

Owners of fake phones in Tanzania will on Thursday see their gadgets go off as the country's telecommunication watchdog sets to televise the switch off exercise.

Eng James Kilaba, acting director general of the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA) said on Wednesday that switching off exercise will go on as planned.

"There will be no extended time for the exercise and this time around the switch off exercise will be done live on television for all to see," he said.

Eng. Kilaba said that the authority is confident to proceed with the exercise after conducting public awareness campaigns from December last year to May this year.

The director said that all mobile phone traders and technicians are supposed to have TCRA licenses that shall allow them to import genuine mobile phones.

He warned all traders of communication devices who shall to fake Imei numbers, saying that doing so is against the law with a penalty of 10 years in jail or 15,000 U.S. dollars fine.

According to him, when TCRA introduced Imei numbers identification system in December last year, four percent of the phones in the country were identified to be fake, 30 percent were duplicate and the remaining 66 percent were genuine.

He noted that investigations until April this year show that duplicate imei numbers have ncreased, indicating that traders have been convincing to buy phones at reduced prices.

"Thus we decided to put more efforts in sensitising the public on the importance of verifying their mobile phones before and to understand better procedures to follow to get a genuine mobile phone," he said.

He, however, said that up until June this year there have been positive changes with a decrease in the number of fake Imei from three percent to 2.96 percent, while the number of duplicated imei drops from two percent to 0.09 percent.

"The imei number for genuine mobile phone has increased from 85 percent to 96.95 percent," the official said.

"Such results indicate positive response from the public on their understanding about the merits of using genuine mobile phones," Eng Kilaba added. Endit