Dubai: More than 27,600 illegal telecommunications devices have been seized by federal inspections teams within the UAE, confirmed federal telecommunications authorities on Wednesday.
The confiscated devices have been handed over to the Economic Department in Dubai, said the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in a statement.
It is believed the devices seized include high tech smartphones, although TRA have yet to confirm the exact nature of devices handed over.
The measures were taken to protect the “telecommunications market in the UAE from the use of unsupported telecommunication devices which are non-compliant with the specifications,” the TRA stated.
Engineer Ahmad Al Shamsi, director of type approval in the TRA, said the spread of such devices in the telecommunications market threatens the system.
The authority said the threat exists “since technical problems may disrupt the telecommunication networks causing for example, frequency interference affecting the telecommunication services’ subscribers.”
Majid Sultan Al Mesmar, Deputy Director General of the telecommunications sector in the TRA, said the latest measures follow two years of work in the UAE to adopt internationally accepted standards for registered local and international manufacturers, licensed operators and companies importing telecommunications devices.
In some cases, the new regulatory rules call for fines or suspension of licences for violators.
Bringing standardisation to the UAE national telecom landscape received a big injection earlier this year when both du and Etisalat said in January they had blocked all fake mobile phones within the country from working.
As instructed by the TRA, both telecom giants worked through a database that listed the unique International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of handsets in the UAE and then proceeded to block those numbers that did not comply.
“As per the time schedule announced earlier, the process of cutting services for fake mobile phones will be completed today. The number of our customers affected with fake mobile phones is nearly 16,000,” said Jaber Al Janahi, etisalat’s vice-president for corporate communications in January.
The TRA imposed the ban on fake handsets in January, saying in a statement the blocking of illegal codes was part of its effort to protect the intellectual property rights of genuine manufacturers.Health issues, such as leaky batteries, were also of high concern.
After the effort, du announced that it had blocked a total of 18,118 handsets.
