FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, along with law enforcement and representatives from the wireless industry, will announce the plan Tuesday. Operators will disable and block further use of a device once it is reported stolen, according to the New York Times.
Over the next six months, each of the four operators is expected to put in place a program to disable phones reported as stolen and within 18 months the FCC plans to help merge them into a central database in order to prevent a phone from being used on another carrier’s network.
U.K. operators have been using the IMEI Database to exchange stolen handset data since 2002. Operators in Chile, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden and Venezuela use the database as well, she said via email.
It is surprising that U.S. operators haven’t come around to sharing information about stolen phones, according to Mark Newman, chief research officer at market research company Informa Telecoms & Media.
“It is hard to find a reason why they haven’t done it before,” said Newman.
“One could only imagine how the benefits would have accrued the operators if they had done this at an earlier stage,” Newman said of the central database.
But better late than never, because trying to curb device thefts has become even more important as an increasing number of users have expensive smartphones, according to Newman.